


we are for each other

by gsparkle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cameos, Alcohol, Christmas, Clint Barton's Farm, Developing Relationship, F/M, Female Friendship, Fluff and Angst, Gift Giving, Natasha Romanov's Arrow Necklace, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, POV Natasha Romanov, POV Steve Rogers, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Stress Baking, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Yoga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-25 22:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 79,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3826744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsparkle/pseuds/gsparkle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SHIELD has fallen, and Steve and Natasha deal with the questions that fell with the Triskelion: who are they, and who do they want to be? Which parts of their pasts are they going to rescue from the rubble? Where do they belong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started working on this nearly a year ago, so it's obviously not compliant with AOU. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> As always, thanks forever and ever to santiagoinbflat and baygull, who have been such awesome betas, cheerleaders, and friends! You two are the best :)

_I note the obvious differences_  
_between each sort and type,_  
_but we are more alike, my friends,_  
_than we are unalike._  
-  
from “Human Family,” Maya Angelou

 

**ONE**

Steve was feeding quarters into the slot of the arcade game when Sam found him.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you loose in here,” he commented, watching the screen blink as the quarters were processed. “It’s like letting Nat take you into Nordstrom’s.”

“That was terrible,” Steve moaned, testing the joystick experimentally. “I mean, shopping is fun, if totally overwhelming, but how does it take someone an _entire hour_ to choose between the red and black version of the exact same shoe? I--” He started to say more, but Pac Man’s familiar face came chomping from the side of the screen. Sam cackled as he watched Steve get eaten by a ghost almost instantly.

“You’re supposed to _avoid_ those, man,” Sam laughed as Steve shoved his slightly-too-long hair out of his eyes. “Here, let me show you.” He nudged the taller man out of the way and took over the controls as Pac-Man scrolled onto the screen. Steve hovered over Sam’s shoulder, peppering him with questions.

“Okay… What’s with the cherries?”

“You eat them, obviously. For someone with heightened abilities, you’re not very observant.”

“Hey, respect your elders. So you eat the cherries, and then the ghosts die?”

“No, when you eat the power dots, you can eat the ghosts.”

“Oh. Okay. Why are the ghosts different colors?”

“For fun? I don’t know, man, I’m not a Pac-Man historian. Just let me play!”

Steve shut up and tracked Pac-Man’s movements across the screen, noting that Sam maneuvered him so that every single dot was eaten. 8-bit music blared triumphantly from the arcade console as Sam completed the level, and Steve itched to try again. He shouldered Sam out of the way and grabbed the control stick, concentration folding his brow. Trying to achieve the lightness with which Sam and Natasha played video games, he gripped the joystick gently and tried to carry the conversation along. “You used to do this kind of stuff often, then? As a kid?”

“Hell yeah, man,” Sam smiled, slapping the bulky arcade game fondly. “Allowance day would come and I’d be in the arcade until it was all spent, then complain to my parents that I didn’t have any money for lunch.”

“Not surprised,” Steve said, frantically avoiding a ghost. “These things really clean you out.”

“Not if you’re good,” Sam teased as Steve got cornered by two ghosts and yelped. “My friends and I were there pretty much every weekend--it was the place to be, the place to meet girls…” He drifted off, nostalgic, as Steve dug in his pocket for another quarter. “My first kiss was in that arcade. Her name was Whitney Brown, and we were 13…”

“And that’s the last time you got any action, right?” Steve asked innocently as he started the game again. “No wonder that memory is so fresh in your mind.” He grinned.

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this to Captain America,” Sam said, scowling, “but, fuck you, man!” Steve threw his head back and laughed, unfortunately causing him to lose sight of the screen and steer directly into a ghost.

“Aw, man,” he whined, but Sam was ignoring him. “Come on, everyone says I’m supposed to modernize myself. Wouldn’t Nat call that a ‘sick burn’?” He ruined his correct usage of the term by adding air quotes.

“She would, and that’s why I’m never hanging out with either of you ever again,” Sam grumbled, stomping away towards the concession stand. Steve easily caught up and fell into step, catching the last of Sam’s rant about how he had “tons of other friends he could be hanging out with.”

“I’m sure you do,” Steve said agreeably, gesturing towards the menu above the booth. “Here, I’ll buy you a soda.”

“Damn right you will,” Sam shot back, grinning. Steve paid for two extra-large Cokes at Sam’s insistence, and they kicked their feet up in a booth that was more silver duct tape than red vinyl. They talked easily about the VA and Steve’s most recent forays into modernity before settling into a discussion of their next course of action in the search for Bucky.

Steve’s frustration at being hospitalized for so long bubbled up as they tried to figure out where Bucky had hidden himself away in those precious couple of days. By the time Steve had gotten on his feet again, the trail was cold, and all he was left with was the file from Kiev. Natasha was busy creating who knew how many personas, and he knew she didn’t want to get involved in this goose chase, anyway, so he and Sam had been struggling through the mix of Russian and English together. It was a slowly unraveling tangled mess, and Steve couldn’t help but despair that they were never going to find Bucky--or worse, that another sector of HYDRA would find him first.

He pushed down on his anger, trying to prevent it from clouding his judgement. “I’m starting to think we should go to New York,” he said slowly, biting his soda straw thoughtfully. “We’ve been all over DC, Virginia, and Maryland, and there’s no trace of him. Obviously, he’s not getting onto a plane with that arm… Hell, we don’t even know if he remembers how to drive.” He sighed and pulled on his too-long hair.

Sam was nodding along as he flipped through the small notebook he carried for whenever they talked about the chase, which was most of the time. “He’s been out of cryostasis for more than three months now, at least. Can’t have been wiped much more recently than that. _If_ we’re reading that file right--”

“And that’s a real big if--”

“--He could be starting to recall some basic things about himself. Probably not your friendship or maybe even you at first,” Sam warned, noting how Steve’s face had brightened, “but a level up from where he was when we saw him, the kind of information his parents would have drilled into him as a child.”

“Name, parents’ names, address,” Steve concluded, eyes brightening as he considered this possibility. “All of which would lead him back to Brooklyn, eventually, if he’s able to put it together. How good do you think his reasoning skills are at this point?”

“Possibly good?” Sam blew out a sigh. “I don’t know, man. I’m sorry. I wish I’d taken Russian instead of Spanish in high school.”

Steve laughed and shook his head. “No way, Spanish is much more useful. What is Russian good for, aside from this mess, and tormenting Nat?” He paused. “Agent Hill could probably give us a hand. If she doesn’t speak the language, I’ll bet she knows someone that does.” He settled back into his seat and felt his cell phone buzz.

Sam leaned forward, a glint in his eye. “Maria works with Stark now, right?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Yes, we can go see Tony, even though you swanning around over him is the last thing his inflated ego needs.” He frowned at his phone screen, then texted back, large fingers careful on the tiny touchscreen buttons. “Nat’s coming to meet us.” It was a statement, but his voice rose at the end. Sam raised an eyebrow.

“She’s been squirrely lately,” he said, twirling his straw through the ice in his soda. “Blowing me off left, right, and center. I asked her if she wanted to join tonight and she said she was busy being cooler than us.”

“Nat, squirrely?” Steve deadpanned. “Never.” He turned his phone over in his hands, absently marveling at how powerful the little scrap of metal and plastic was. “She has been a bit more distant than usual, though, I’ll give you that. She hasn’t tried to get me a date in about two weeks, which has got to be some kind of record. Maybe she’s reading or knitting or whatever it is she does to relax.” He chuckled as he rose to throw out his soda, then paused. “That, or she’s taken a job on and has been off garrotting people in the Czech Republic for the last month. Which might actually be how she relaxes.”

“I hear Prague is lovely this time of year,” Sam said. He followed Steve back to the arcade games, slurping noisily on the watery remains of his soda. Steve dropped a quarter into Space Invaders, experimentally moving the joystick as the screen momentarily faded. Sam lounged against the console, arm draped over the top of the screen’s box. He waited until Steve was engrossed in the game before casually starting, “So, speaking of Nat always trying to set you up with girls at work…”

Steve was too distracted by the 8-bit aliens descending upon him to recognize that they had not actually been speaking of Nat setting him up. He flicked his eyes briefly to Sam. “Yeah?”

Sam grinned. “That girl at the front desk finally agreed to get dinner with me, but she wants to bring her sister…” He trailed off, looking expectantly at Steve, who frowned as another row of aliens descended from the top of the screen. When Steve didn’t immediately respond, Sam added, “It’s a double date, bro. I know they had those back in the day.”

“Haven’t you heard what a shrimp I was back then?” Steve asked lightly, not wanting to burden his new friend with his sometimes depressing history. Unbidden, memories of the Stark Expo rushed his mind. He remembered the crowd salivating over Howard Stark’s flying car (still not a reality, he noted), and the dimly lit enlistment center where Dr. Erskine recruited him, and most vividly, he remembered Bucky. Bucky, his uniform starched and hat only slightly askew. Bucky, warning him not to do anything stupid, when they both knew that he’d do it anyway. Bucky, walking off with his date and the girl’s friend (who had obviously never been interested in Steve in the first place), not to be seen again until Steve had raided that laboratory, and then--and then--

Steve shook his head, schooling his features into a mask of self-deprecation. “I was a sick little guy, and gals were pretty much only interested in the Army men,” he said, lips quirking into a tiny smile. He tried to concentrate on the space invaders as his memories cleared.

Sam was not deterred. “Well, now’s your chance!” He slapped Steve on the back, causing him to jerk the control stick and shoot in the entirely wrong direction. Sam obliviously continued, “It’s a night with me and some lovely ladies, how could that be terrible?”

Steve realized that this conversation was not going to end soon, and gave up on saving the Earth from the pixelated space invaders. He swiped a hand over his face before turning to Sam frankly. “Look, I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Nat. It’s not exactly the easiest thing for me to, er, find someone that has similar life experiences to my own.” He shrugged, wishing that sentence didn’t make him feel so lonely.

He wasn’t expecting Sam to laugh in his face. “Sorry, man,” Sam apologized, “but it makes no difference to either of us whether you and the sister have a single thing in common; although I think you both like art, you could talk about that all night. Really, it’s just that bringing Captain America as my friend gives me big ups. That, and you need to get out more.” Sam smiled wide and tried to shoot the skee-ball from behind his back. It missed by a wide margin and flew around a corner. “Ah, shit.”

“Lost something?” Natasha snarked, coming around the corner with the errant skee-ball in her hand. She dropped it into Sam’s hand. “I should have known I’d find you two playing with balls.” She smiled at her own joke.

“Har, har,” Steve said flatly. “I thought you were too cool to hang out with us tonight--what gives?” He glanced Natasha over, searching for signs of injury. She met his assessing gaze and shook her head so slightly that he nearly missed it.

“I’m too cool to hang out with you _any_ night,” she retorted, rolling her eyes, “but yes, tonight I was actually at my book club, and now I’m here to take you boys to get some ice cream.” She looked significantly at Steve.

“When exactly did you have time to join a book club?” Sam asked. “does it involve Dostoyevsky?”

“We’d love to get ice cream,” Steve replied as he elbowed his friend. “Right, Sam?” Steve rolled the rest of the skee balls, hitting the 40 or 50 target each time. The machine exploded with tickets as Sam and Natasha began to walk away. Steve hurriedly handed the pile of tickets to a miniature version of Sam, maybe 8 years old, whose eyes bulged in excitement as he ran off to show his mom. As Steve caught up to Sam and Natasha, he could hear them bickering.

“It’s a code, Sam,” Natasha was saying in her bored voice, ponytail swishing as she walked with a purpose. “And what are you, five?”

“If wanting ice cream makes me five, then yeah I am,” Sam replied. “What kind of adults make a code that involves ice cream and then don’t actually act on it?” He looked at Steve for support, but Steve raised his hands in neutrality.

“Adults who buy their ice cream in two-pint tubs at the grocery store?” Natasha sighed. “Adults who don’t need cones?”

“Hey, I said nothing about cones,” Sam shot back, “and I wasn’t even thinking about ice cream until you said something about it, so this is your fault. There’s no good reason _not_ to get it, right?”

Steve looked at Natasha and shrugged. Neither “book club” nor “ice cream” were codes for bad news or need for immediate action, so he could only assume that Nat’s push for movement was based on another factor. Maybe she needed a change of scenery? Or perhaps she just actually didn’t like ice cream; Steve, however, was always hungry.

“It’s just ice cream, Nat,” Steve said innocently, as Sam nodded with a smirk. “There’s a place right around the corner, and a park right next to it, which is a good place for you to brief us.” He gave her his most winning smile, and she sighed, resigned, before following him around the block into the ice cream shop.

Soon they were seated at a picnic table in the park, watching a gaggle of children chase after a dog that had stolen their ball. Sam crunched his way through a cake cone topped with mint chocolate chip, while Steve dug enthusiastically into a waffle cone bowl of cake batter (which, he was thrilled to discover, really did taste like cake). The two men waited patiently as Natasha savored the first bite of her dark chocolate and raspberry gelato, watching the children begin a game of kickball while the dog sulked behind the backstop.

“Stark wants us in New York,” Natasha said abruptly, jerking Steve’s attention from the kickball game. “Says there’s something we need to hear from Maria.” She took another bite of her gelato and raised her eyebrows at Steve. Sam, unsure what significance lay in that statement, took another large bite of his cone and waited, gaze flicking between his two friends.

Steve took a careful bite of his sundae before replying. “Did he say what for? Is this another weekend of wining and dining to convince us to move into the Tower? Because that Cirque du Soleil show he took us to last time was anything but convincing,” he finished emphatically. He was prepared to defend his anti-contortionist views, but Sam had other questions.

“You were offered a spot in Stark Tower, and said no?” Sam stared at Steve, oblivious to the mint trail dripping down his hand. “But the tech--and the view--” He sputtered to a stop before simply shaking his head.

Natasha shrugged. “I turned it down, too,” she offered, and she and Steve shared a knowing glance. Working with Tony Stark was trying enough that living with him could be nothing short of an absolute nightmare; plus, while Steve and Tony could always duke out their tempers in a practice ring, Tony’s lingering distrust of Natasha after her infiltration of his company seemed to persist even though they’d saved the world together. The only explanation she ever offered, though--to Steve, Tony, or anyone else--was that SHIELD was in DC, so that was where she needed to be. She repeated this line to Sam, who told her she was “insane,” before continuing, “Anyway, the intel I have says nothing about a play for our relocation. All I know is that Tony is summoning us, along with the rest of the crew.”

Steve leaned forward, ice cream momentarily forgotten. “ _Everyone?_ If he’s calling Thor in, it’s got to be something critical.”

Natasha nodded, swirling the last of her gelato. “Agreed, but there’s no indication that it’s something dangerous, so don’t tell anyone I’m saying this, but I’m at a loss.” She smiled crookedly, letting Steve and Sam laugh while she strode to the trashcan and tossed her ice cream cup. When she returned, she moved on to the next step: transportation.

“I was told we’d only need to be there for the weekend, and yes, Sam, you are invited,” she said, catching Sam trying to disguise his earnestly hopeful face. “Let’s meet at Steve’s on Saturday at 0900. I’ll drive,” she said in voice that brooked no argument. Fine with Steve. Nat had “acquired” her nice company car when S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, and could somehow force it to New York in about three hours (likely because she considered speed limits to be mere suggestions).

Steve clapped his hands together. “Sounds like everything’s in order there. What was the book club about this time around?” He looked at Natasha expectantly, not sure what he was going to get. It wasn’t often that she used the phrase, which meant she had gone on a personal trip; in fact, the only reason he knew it was because it had been included in the list of situations they’d been required to select an encoded term for as partners.

“ _Pride and Prejudice,_ ” Natasha replied, glancing at Steve for a fraction of a second before pulling the book out of her bag ( _Always so prepared,_ he thought with genuine admiration). “I’ve read it before, but it was nice to look at it from a new angle. Sorry, Sam, no Russian tragedies this week,” she continued while Steve reviewed his code index. There was a library of SHIELD literary codes: _Wuthering Heights,_ “No deviance from mission plan;” _Dracula,_ “Death of team member;” _The Picture of Dorian Grey,_ “Death of adversary.” _Pride and Prejudice_  meant “we’re in compromised company,” and Steve knew there were even more that were less-used or outdated.

And just what kind of “personal trip” had Nat been on that _Sam_ was considered compromised company?

 

**TWO**

Even on Saturdays, Steve was awake at 6:00 AM and on his preferred running route by 6:15 AM. The D.C. summer humidity was just barely starting to curl into the air, and he realized with a wry smile that the trees shading him were probably about as old as he was. The nice thing about being genetically engineered was that you didn’t have to stretch before a run or worry too much about overdoing it. He settled into his usual pace, easily clipping past average joggers, and let his mind wander as his body worked.

He hadn’t heard from Natasha since Sunday when they’d split up after ice cream, so here he was, a week later, still wondering what her trip had been about, why it had been so secret that Sam wasn’t allowed in on the results. Maybe she had gone to Russia to wreak vengeance on an old Red Room? While Steve had learned about her KGB training in her file long ago, Sam had only read about it in the internet storm Nat had unleashed when she unlocked SHIELD to the world. It wasn’t that Sam had taken the intel badly or that he didn’t trust Natasha--like most things, he had shrugged the news right off. If anything, it was probably that _she_ didn’t trust _him_. Everyone knew that Natasha trusted few, and those select few were arranged in a hierarchy known only to her.

 _At least I’m still on the list,_ Steve thought as he streaked by the Jefferson Memorial, water glittering in the rising sunlight. He’d seen Natasha’s face when Maria had led them into a room where Fury had laid, damaged but still calling the shots. She’d lost too much blood to focus on keeping her usual inscrutable mask in place, and he’d seen the betrayal written plainly in her eyes. As a tactician, Steve understood Fury’s rationale: trust nobody, and you make it out alive; as Nat’s friend, however, he knew that she had believed she’d been one of Fury’s select, trustworthy agents. He’d seen her tremble as Fury was pronounced dead, seen her lay a hand on his believed corpse with a tenderness he hadn’t known she’d possessed. In the quiet moments before the INSIGHT mission, Steve had caught Natasha’s distrusting gaze drifting back over to Fury, and hadn’t missed the swaths of guilt in Fury’s good eye as he watched Natasha get bandaged up.

But expecting Nat to talk about things like _feelings_ was like expecting Fury to smile: it wasn’t going to happen until they wanted it to, and even then, it would be brief and calculated. Steve nodded to a familiar jogger as he drew up at the Lincoln Memorial, pausing to take in the Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument behind it. He checked the fancy gadget on his wrist, a pedometer that Sam had lent him. It tracked his steps, blood pressure, mileage, caloric use, and, with some maneuvering, told time. It was 6:45 AM, and the tourists were already starting to arrive, pouring out of buses in a colorful stream. In about five minutes, they’d get close enough to spot him, and then he wouldn’t be able to get away. It was nice to talk to people, especially the war vets that were often the core of D.C. tour groups, but if he was late to a meeting at his own apartment, Nat would murder him with a spoon. Reluctantly, he turned and retraced his steps home.

Steve jogged up the last flight of stairs to his apartment, sparing a glance for Kate--no, Sharon’s--apartment. It lay empty now: Sharon had found a new employer, as had most SHIELD employees, and as SHIELD no longer paid for the apartment, she had obviously moved. By the time Steve had returned from the hospital, she was gone.

After a hot shower (possibly his favorite luxury of the 21st century), Steve turned on his most recent music exploration--a “Best of Michael Jackson” compilation--and made a stack of pancakes, enjoying the rhythm of the music; it was obvious why this “Thriller” song was so popular. After cleaning up, he sat down with his tower of pancakes. He covered his breakfast in a ridiculous amount of syrup, then flipped open the _Washington Post_ and started reading. Since waking up in New York, Steve had made it a priority to stay current with the happenings of the world; now that Bucky was somewhere out there, too, every day’s paper held the potential for a report on a strange man with a metal arm. Sometimes strange local occurrences had brought Sam and Steve, too late, to destroyed HYDRA safehouses and bases in suburban neighborhoods around the capitol area.

Unfortunately, this Saturday was not one that brought news of Bucky’s location, so Steve slowly absorbed the _Post’s_ offerings as he ate. There was an article about some new project of Stark’s, which he read until he realized it was not about building a flying car, and ongoing coverage of SHIELD’s catastrophic demise, which he ignored completely based on the biased headline. He was three questions into the daily crossword puzzle when there was a knock at the door. Startled, Steve glanced at the oven clock and saw that it was already 8:30 AM.

Sam was leaning on the doorframe when Steve opened it, looking less than alert. “Hey, man,” Steve said in his most cheerful tone, knowing it would piss Sam off. “Why is your mustache so sad this morning?” Sam rolled his eyes and slumped into the room, dropping a small duffel bag inside the door.

“Weekends and early mornings are not supposed to go together,” Sam complained as he poured water into Steve’s coffee maker. Steve snorted and went back to the crossword. It was silent, aside from Steve periodically asking about pop culture references in the clues, until the smell of freshly percolated coffee wove through the air. Sam poured two cups and handed one to Steve before taking a deep drink from his own, sighing gratefully as the caffeine hit his veins.

Steve put his pencil down and followed Sam to the couch, sipping from his coffee before snarking, “And here I thought you’d be all lathered up about visiting Stark Tower, you know, seeing all those robots and Tony’s fancy beard.” He grinned as Sam glared at him. “Maybe there’s an opening in that Ironman dance troupe Tony had at the Stark Expo,” Steve continued. “You’d be a great dancer. Or, hey, now that Pepper is the CEO, he could probably use a new personal assistant.”

They heard a click, then Natasha’s light footsteps in the kitchen. “Hey, fellas,” she called as she poured coffee into a thermos. Steve came to the kitchen to refill his own mug.

“I thought I told you to stop breaking in here,” he said mildly.

“You did,” Natasha smirked, “so I got a key made.” Steve held out his hand and she slapped the key into it; they both knew she had more than one copy. Natasha jerked her head towards the living room. “Plus, it’s good for you to be surprised now and then. I thought I’d beat this one here,” she said, giving Steve a pointed look that clearly said, _so we could talk about the book club._ “What’s the story there?”

Sam dragged himself off the couch and into the kitchen, where he rinsed his mug out and set it on the drying rack. Steve grinned and said, “Sam came early to practice his audition piece for Tony’s dance squad. It’s really quite impressive.” He gulped down the last of his coffee.

Sam grumbled as he shoved his feet into his shoes and grabbed his duffel. “You won’t be laughing when I fly away with your shield.”

Natasha laughed and patted Sam on the arm. “Are you sure you can even lift it, Tweety?” fake sympathy dripping in her tone.

“Really, Tweety is the best you got?” he asked as they waited for Steve to grab his packed bag from his hall closet. “I’m tired, and distracted by my excitement about Stark Tower, the home of Tony Stark, who is better than _both_ of you,” he continued, following Natasha and Steve down the stairs and into her waiting car. “He is going to welcome me with open robotic arms.” He got comfortable in the backseat, pulling on a sweatshirt and laying out his duffel to use as a pillow.

“You two will get on like a house on fire,” Natasha said dryly as she pulled away from the curb, tires squealing. She glanced at her rearview mirror and saw that Sam was, despite drinking two cups of coffee, already starting to fall asleep.

“Oh, most definitely,” Sam responded drowsily, curling into the seatback. Steve stifled a laugh and Natasha pulled up some quiet guitar music that almost had him drifting off, too. He opened his bag and pulled out a sketchpad, letting the gentle sounds inspire him as D.C. faded quickly into the background.

About an hour into the drive Natasha turned down the guitar music. Steve looked up from a doodle of the dog he’d met during his run the day before, surprised to see that they were nearly though Delaware. “Do I want to know how fast you’re driving?” he asked with resignation, watching crooked trees zoom past.

Natasha lowered her sunglasses and smiled smugly. “SHIELD might be gone, but state troopers are still afraid to mess with one of its cars. Last time they pulled me over, they got slapped with a court case about diplomatic immunity and timely movement of the Bhutanese ambassador’s poodle.”

“Does Bhutan _have_ an embassy?” Steve asked, nonplussed.

Natasha smirked. “No, but Delaware’s state police _might_ not know that. The case went on so long that they just tagged my car to be left alone.” She shrugged. “Besides, there’s nobody on the road right now, anyway. This car is almost as smart as I am; it can handle itself.” She leaned into her headrest, totally at ease.

“Great,” said Steve flatly, “leave us in the hands of a self-propelling car driving at the speed of light.” Sometimes he hated the future. “So what’s up, then?”

Natasha’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, watching Sam’s chest rise and fall as he quietly snored. She was silent for a few moments, eyes cautious, before she said softly, “The book club is Barton.” She waited for a shocked outburst from Steve, and when none came, she continued, “I went to retrieve him. He was in deep cover, real deep cover, in Zagreb. He’d taken a job that was blacker than black ops; we call it ‘Deep Black.’ It was a long term infiltration that started in January, open ended until the mission was complete. That’s all he told me when he left, which is par for the course. But then we took down SHIELD, and I thought he’d hear about it through a backchannel.”

“But he didn’t.”

Natasha nodded. “But he didn’t. He was still operating under Deep Black conditions, nothing in or out. I started to get… _concerned_ that he didn’t know that his mission was now probably a moot point, so I looked into it. There was nothing on file about the op, so I went to see Stark.”

Steve, who had let his head rest on the window as he listened, shot upright. “You went to Stark instead of me? He blew all his suits, remember? He’s useless in a fight!”

Natasha shushed him, hooking her thumb back to Sam’s sleeping form, then shook her head. “Come on, Steve. I’m a spy, not a fighter, not unless I have to be. Stark had intel. Before we left the helicarrier for New York, Stark attached a tracker to Barton’s quiver. Just in case--” She broke off, unwilling to say what they were both thinking.

Steve said it instead. “Just in case he relapsed, so that he could lead us to Loki.”

Natasha smiled a tight smile that was really a grimace. “Yes. It was passive, though, and didn’t do anything until you turned it on. A tech sweep would ignore it, but once it’s on, it pings a satellite just like a cellphone does. I had Stark turn it on, and then--” She shrugged.

Steve could fill in the rest. “So you had Stark activate the GPS, and went to Zagreb and bailed Barton out, alone. What could _possibly_ go wrong?” he finished, sarcasm dripping from each word.

Natasha rolled her eyes so hard that they crossed. “In case you’ve forgotten, Rogers,” she snapped, “I’ve been doing this longer than you have, longer even than most SHIELD agents. Don’t act like I’m some delicate flower.”

Steve pulled a face, then sighed. “I know. I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant to imply. I just wish you had taken some form of back up, like me, perhaps.” He looked Nat in the eye and smiled apologetically. “Tell me what happened?”

\---

She’d found him in Zagreb, hanging out with a gang of jetsetting playboys at the pool of the swankiest hotel in town. Some were the pasty, inbred boys that were too socially incapable to talk to pretty women; others were the gelled, smooth lounge crawlers that skipped right over the talking and went straight for groping. What they lacked in attractive personalities and common interests, they made for up with piles of family money.

In the middle of them all was Clint, cracking jokes while strutting around in a hilariously tiny European bathing suit (that was something he’d be hearing about later). From her vantage point in a tree in the next lot, she could see the loose circle of security guards, some in uniform and some dressed to match the beautiful people that partied on the patio. Most of the guards were rent-a-cops, but there were a handful that were clearly ex-military; these were the ones Natasha watched. They didn’t appear to regard Clint with any suspicion, so he’d obviously been a member of the group for a while; Clint wasn’t watching them, so he evidently felt that he’d be protected. She idly wondered what his cover story was. Lost heir? Nouveau riche?

Fortunately, she had time to speculate, because they’d stayed at the pool all afternoon, the group growing drunker and more obnoxious as the light wound down. After much drunken argument, the group had agreed upon a local club where they could continue the party. Natasha had shimmied down the tree and ran back to her tiny hostel room to change into an equally tiny dress. For all her extensive training, she had only the most basic extraction plan in mind: Pick Clint up at the bar, sell the seductress game to the crowd, tow him out by the lapel as his little posse cheered him on, and then get the hell out of town. It had worked before, countless times.

But it didn’t work this time.

Natasha had sat at the bar, sipping the seltzer water she passionately wished was vodka, and watched the entrance with a trained eye until the playboys had arrived and boisterously taken up on the dance floor. She’d watched the guards fade into the crowd, noting that they’d ditched the rent-a-cops in an effort to slim down their security detail. The bartender refilled her glass twice as she waited for every member of the group to find a girl willing to hang off his arm for the night--except Clint, who spoke to many girls, but ultimately sent them all away.

Then it was time to move.

Leaving her glass at the bar, Natasha had joined the throng of dancers and wound her way through the crowd, giving a coy smile to any man that tried to buy her a drink. She let a handsy creep dance with her once she was close enough for Clint to see her. Clint was an observer, and rarely knew how to relax and enjoy a party: he’d be scanning the crowd, constantly looking for a threat.

She saw Clint’s eyes flash as she roughly pushed the creep’s hand off her ass for the third time. _About damn time,_ she thought as Clint stalked up and pushed the guy away. “Back off,” he snarled, then turned to her. “Are you oka--” His eyes widened as they met Natasha’s. “ _Tasha_?”

“Shut up,” she commanded. Put the guy in deep cover and he forgot all protocol, honestly. “Dance with me. Now. We can talk later.” Natasha allowed the crappy techno control her body for a few more beats before saying as quietly as she could, “I’m going to seduce you, and we’re going to leave.”

Clint showily kissed her in response, opening the siren scene they had played a thousand times on their current stage. The role of seductress fit her like a very tight glove, and she let her body automatically grind against his as her brain whirred. _Has the band of fools noticed yet that he’s picked up a girl? Are the guards convinced yet?_ She finally heard a cheer and a catcall as Clint slid his hand down her back, and smiled. Clint lifted his head and nodded to his friends, making some sort of (surely obscene) gesture behind her back.

“Now,” he whispered against her lips, and she moved in, grabbing his lapels and pulling him closer. A raucous cheer went up and she threw Clint’s friends one of her man-eating smiles as he let her lead him off the floor by the loosened tie, stumbling while flashing a thumbs up with one hand and grabbing her waist with the other. Before they could reach the exit, the security guards drew together, eyeing them with what Natasha fervently hoped wasn’t familiarity. “It’s okay, she’s with me,” Clint drawled, pasting a wasted grin on his face and waving a languid hand at the guards, but they stood their ground. One guard turned his head to speak to another and Natasha read his lips under the booming bass: “The Black Widow.”

_Shit._

The guards advanced on them. With one look, Natasha and Clint dropped their lovesick act and became STRIKE Team Delta, shifting into fight stances as the partiers obliviously continued dancing. Clint drew a knife from his ankle holster and threw it at the closest guard’s gun hand, eliciting a loud scream. “Shall we get this party started, then?” Clint said in that same drawl, grinning at Natasha before drawing his hand back to punch the wounded guard. Two guards split off to join Clint’s fray, leaving Natasha with the other three. She let herself sit in her stance until her guards were close enough, a lethal smile spreading across her face.

Then she pounced. She launched a kick at the first guard, catching him square in the chest. He stumbled and she turned her attention to the fist coming directly her way. Dodging left, Natasha grabbed the wrist of the second guard and flipped him over her hip, throwing him right into the first guard as he attempted to regain his footing. Both men crashed to the ground, and she tossed a sting disc after them to make sure they stayed there.

The third guard watched his colleagues convulse and visibly gulped before charging. Natasha went low and he barrelled over her, landing on steady feet, but facing the wrong way. She straightened and went for his kidneys, landing two hard punches before he turned around and grabbed her by the neck. The loss of oxygen momentarily uncoordinated her before she zapped the guard’s arms with her gauntlets. Shocked, he dropped her; she swept her leg under his feet and he fell heavily to the floor. One swift hit to the temple and he was out.

Natasha swung around, trying to assess the situation, and coming up with: _We need to get the fuck out._ She followed the trail of guards to the DJ’s booth, where Clint was retrieving his knife from an unconscious guard’s hand while the DJ cowered in the corner.

“Exit clear,” she said as he stood and turned to her. “We need to get out of here before--” Shots rang out in the club as one of Clint’s slimier targets remembered he was carrying a gun and began firing wildly in their general direction. Natasha immediately flattened herself behind a column and allowed herself a groan of frustration before turning back to Clint. “As I was saying,” she shouted, and then stopped short, the breath rushing out of her chest. As the club patrons screamed and ran for exits, Natasha stared at the blood seeping through the right shoulder of Clint’s expensive suit.

Clint looked down at his shoulder and swore. “ _Fuck._ We don’t have time for this. I can run. Let’s go.” He turned and shot towards the exit, and Natasha leapt to follow him. They raced out the club doors and into the first car they saw, Natasha producing a gun and giving the driver the address of the deli shop three doors down from her hostel. It was a silent ride, punctuated only by Clint wincing and the driver quietly whimpering as he ran every red light he encountered.

When they arrived at the deli, Natasha handed the driver a small stack of 1000 kuna notes, knowing it would more than make up for the terror she’d put the man through. “ _Oprostite,_ ” she apologized with a small smile, before sliding out of the car and grabbing Clint’s non-damaged arm. They strolled down the street as the liberated car peeled away from the curb, Natasha scanning for any signs that they were followed. Spotting none, she pulled Clint onto the side street where her hostel was located and pushed him up the three flights of stairs to her shabby room (next time, she was _definitely_ getting Stark to pay).

Inside, Clint sank into the worn mattress. “Not there,” Natasha instructed as she pulled supplies out of the wobbly dresser. “You’ll get blood on the mattress. Sit over here.” She dragged a painted wooden chair out of the corner and pushed Clint down. A quick examination of his shoulder showed that the bullet had gone straight through the shoulder, missing his clavicle by an inch; Natasha let out a sigh of relief, and Clint turned his head.

“Nat, what the hell are you doing here?” he asked, gritting his teeth as she adjusted his arm so she could cut the jacket and shirt off.

“SHIELD is gone,” she said quietly as she snipped along the seams. She had set up a white noise generator to prevent technological eavesdropping, but an old fashioned ear at the door would easily circumvent it. “Rogers, Hill, and I; we dismantled it.”

“ _What?_ ” Clint started to get to his feet; Natasha held him down and pulled the remains of the suit off his shoulders. “Aw, I really liked that suit.” He spared a glance at the ruined grey pinstripe while Natasha padded to the drawer for an antiseptic. “Anyway, as I was saying before, _what?_ ” He was so intrigued by Natasha’s life since he’d been gone that he barely seemed to feel the sting as she cleaned the entrance and exit wounds or the soreness as she set his arm in a makeshift splint and sling.

“It’s not safe to say anything else here,” she said as she began to pack her bag back up. _I don’t trust myself to explain everything without bursting into tears._ “I came to get you as soon as I could create some aliases for us to travel on. I’m here without any backup, SHIELD or otherwise. Hopefully your friends won’t come looking too hard for you tonight, because we can’t get off the ground until tomorrow, and that’s on standby flights or very expensive tickets.”

“We’re flying coach?” Clint asked, drowsy as the adrenaline drained from his system. “I can’t remember the last time I did that.” He stood to awkwardly remove the pants of his suit before gingerly settling himself on the bed to remove his hearing aids. Natasha could feel him watching her under sleep-heavy eyelids as she busied herself around the room.

When they were home and she knew their location was secure, they could talk. Until then, she’d make sure that their bags were packed, that all trace of their presence was erased, and that the clothes she’d brought for the two of them were ready. Clint’s loud, open-mouthed snore told her he was out for the count, officially freeing her from answering any more questions until they were home. She crawled into bed, taking care not to jostle his arm as she set three separate alarms for the next morning.

“Goodnight, Clint,” Natasha murmured as she tucked her feet between his calves, searching for warmth under the thin blanket. He snored in response, and her lips curled into a sleepy smile.

 

By 0900 the next morning, they were at the airport, portraying an unlucky couple who had just learned that their home had burned down back in the States. _And it has,_ Natasha thought as Clint leveraged his splinted arm for an upgrade to first class. _Burned right to the ground, and I held the match._ At the gate, Clint fell asleep again; she knew he’d sustained worse injuries in the past, but with all SHIELD hospitals out of service, she felt that the best choice was to take him to Bruce in New York.

“I do not need to be seen by a doctor, Banner or otherwise,” Clint grumbled as they seated themselves on the plane. “I’ve been shot plenty of times before.”

Natasha pushed their bags into the overhead carrier. “Yes, you do.” She lowered her voice. “Who knows how those bullets were made, or if they’ve been coated with anything.” She talked over Clint’s insistence that he did, since he’d been with them for half a year. “You don’t know everything about them, or anything else, for that matter. You’re going to see Dr. Banner.”

“I’m not,” Clint insisted.

Twelve hours later, Natasha handed a disgruntled Clint off to Bruce in the lobby of Stark Tower.

“You’re not staying, Agent Romanoff?” the doctor asked in his quiet way. “I’m sure Tony and Pepper would love to have you.”

Natasha hoped her smile conveyed an appropriate amount of disappointment, but she was too tired to care if it didn’t. “Not today, I’m afraid, Doctor. I’ve got to head back to D.C. and round up the boys. I’ll see you soon.” She tossed the last bit over her shoulder as she strode back to the waiting car.

“Back to LaGuardia, Happy,” Natasha instructed Tony’s driver, and then promptly fell asleep.

\---

“And now I’m back here,” Natasha finished with a small shrug that belied the significance of her adventure. They were in the middle of the New Jersey Turnpike, and she pulled the car into a rest stop. Sam snuffled and turned over in the backseat as Natasha and Steve climbed out of the car and stretched.

“When did you get back?” Steve asked, watching Natasha’s face. Now that her tale was done, she looked drawn and tired, head bent as she sniffed her now-cold coffee. She wrinkled her nose and poured the brown liquid onto a bush.

“Sunday, just before I met you guys at the arcade. I went straight there.” Steve stopped in his tracks and gave Natasha an assessing look. He wanted to ask what the hell she’d been doing in the week since they’d talked, or why she still looked so exhausted, or why she hadn’t told him anything sooner. But questions like that were exactly what shut Nat down, and fast, so instead he eyed her cautiously. She glared back. “What?”

“I know this probably isn’t really your thing,” Steve said hesitantly, “but, er, do you want a hug?” He finished his question by tentatively holding his arms out to her.

Natasha cocked an eyebrow. “Are you fucking kidding me, Rogers?” she asked with a smirk. Steve shrugged and waited until, thirty seconds later, she warily stepped closer and let him wrap his arms around her. She sagged against him, and he felt the tension seep out of her as they stood on the sidewalk next to the vending machine. “I’m only doing this for you,” she mumbled eventually, mouth partially squashed by one giant arm.

“Uh huh,” he agreed, patting her once on the back before releasing her. She stood for a moment, uncharacteristic uncertainty filling her eyes, before whirling away to the bathroom. Steve went back to the car and popped open the glove compartment, hunting for a granola bar. He found a raisin one, which he tossed at the now-awake Sam, and a chocolate chip one buried under a plastic rectangle with a screen on one side and batteries stuck into the other. There was a red cartridge in the slot.

“What’s this?” Steve asked, flipping what he assumed was a power switch on the side. The trill of 8-bit music coincided with Natasha returning to the car. She directed a small smile at him, which widened as more tinny music erupted from the device in Steve’s hands. Sam leaned forward, dangling his granola bar dangerously close to Steve’s ear.

“You keep a GameBoy in your car, Nat?” Sam asked as Natasha gunned the car back onto the highway. “Doesn’t that mess up the batteries?” He tried to snatch it from Steve.

“GameBoys are indestructible.”

“Shh, I’m trying to watch,” Steve insisted, focusing on the battle between two small, unfamiliar animals unfolding on the screen. The word “POKEMON” flashed and Steve squinted. “What the hell is… _poke-man?_ ”

“Don’t tell him,” Natasha said before Sam could open his mouth. “Let him enjoy this beautiful experience.” Sam rolled his eyes.

“All I was gonna say is that he better prepare himself,” Sam replied, clapping Steve on the shoulder. “You’re going to waste a lot of time on that one, bro. A _lot._ ”

Steve snorted. “I’m an unemployed super soldier. I don’t do anything _but_ waste time.” He pressed the button to start the game. Barring whatever Stark was about to throw at them, he really didn’t have much going on besides his hunt for Bucky. What the hell, he had time to waste on a kids game. He named his rival Tony (Stark would love that) and picked the water turtle as his starting pokemon, though there was no way he was calling it Squirtle. He was an adult, for god’s sake.

The game was addicting. “Is this why there are always news reports about how kids need to go outside more?” Steve asked after looking at the clock and realizing that forty-five minutes had flown by without his character accomplishing anything at all.

Natasha cracked a smile. “That, and high fructose corn syrup,” she said as she took a hard right and neatly cut off a dump truck. Steve started to ask what exactly high fructose corn syrup was, but Sam had spotted Stark Tower and had his nose pressed to the window like a kid at a pet shop.

“I can’t believe it,” Sam gushed, eyes filled with the tower and surrounding buildings.

“Believe it,” Natasha grumbled, flying through a very red light. The tower loomed overhead as they drew closer, and Natasha child-locked the rear windows to prevent Sam from sticking his head out to see better. The brakes screeched as she pulled up to the entrance, where one of Tony’s favored blue screens was embedded in a reinforced steel gate.

“Good afternoon,” JARVIS said. “Please press your thumb to the screen to confirm your identity.” Natasha reached out and carefully pressed her thumb into the circle that appeared on the screen and waited until JARVIS continued, “Welcome, Miss Romanoff. I trust you had a pleasant journey?”

“Why, thank you, JARVIS, I did,” Natasha said politely. “I have Captain Rogers and Sam Wilson with me in the car, as well.”

“Much appreciated, Miss Romanoff,” JARVIS replied. “They will be identified in the garage. Enjoy your visit to Stark Tower.” The gate rolled away and Natasha drove through a short tunnel before parking in Tony’s visitor garage, where he kept his less expensive cars. Sam whistled as he stepped out and looked around.

“‘Nice place’ would be an understatement,” he said, trying to curb his excited stride to the elevator.

“Wait until you see the inside,” Steve said, enjoying the fact that, for once, he was not the dazzled newcomer.

“It must be nice, if Nat was that nice to the AI,” Sam replied. He turned to her as they waited for the elevator. “How come you’re nicer to JARVIS than you are to me? I thought you were only polite when you were working.” The elevator dinged.

Natasha smiled and stepped past him into the elevator. “Sam, _you_ are no threat to me, but should a robot apocalypse come about, the kind of capability that JARVIS has is terrifying. So I’m nice, just in case.” She smiled as the elevator began to rise. Steve laughed and asked JARVIS for a little music.

“Certainly, sir,” the AI replied as tinkly piano music filled the elevator. “And, Miss Romanoff? Your thoughts are... duly noted.”

 

**THREE**

Steve and Natasha knew the drill. Tony rarely had any idea what day it was, let alone when his guests would be arriving, so they’d sit in his newly repaired lounge until either he appeared, smudged with grease, or JARVIS escorted them to a very annoyed Pepper Potts.   

Today was no different. Sam wandered the room, nearly vibrating with the effort to not touch anything, while Steve considered the repaired floor. Last he’d been there, Tony had been insisting that the Loki-sized holes the Hulk had left needed to be preserved “for posterity, Pepper!” Pepper had immediately retorted that the holes broke about thirteen building codes, ruined the flow of the room, and did not fit into the aesthetic; then she’d leaned closer and whispered something into his ear, of which Steve could only hear “Bruce.” Evidently, Pepper had won, as the floor was once again one smooth slab of stone under the fancy sunken living room and workspace.

It had been so long since the battle, and yet Steve could still vividly remember standing in Hulk’s shadow, watching Clint’s nocked arrow rest just short of Loki’s throat. He’d quickly surrendered, with a better sense of humor than any of the rest of them possessed at the time--after all, _he_ wasn’t the one who’d be cleaning up the mess he’d made. Afterwards, Tony had led them all to the shawarma place where they’d made a ridiculous scene, everyone still in their battle gear and Thor’s cape sweeping along the floor as he put away enough food to feed seven people. It was a bizarre day in what had been a bizarre new world for Steve, one populated with flying gods and electric aliens.

In the present, Steve sighed and shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. “Typical Stark,” he grumbled to Natasha, who was leaning on the arm of the sofa next to him. She looked up at him and smirked.

“I was his personal assistant for a week, and I’m fairly certain he had no idea what my name was the whole time,” she said, but her voice was fond. It was hard to watch someone as confident as Tony spiral out of control without rooting for him, just a bit. “Of course, he had other things on his mind, like dying,” she continued airily. Steve had upwards of fifty questions about her relationship with Stark, but Natasha was notoriously close-lipped about previous jobs, and especially about her brief time at Stark Industries. Maybe this weekend, Tony would try again to get Natasha drunk, and he could convince it out of her then.

“Speaking of which, I could really use a drink. Stark puts me on edge,” she said, striding to the elegant bar that ran the width of the room. She pulled out a bottle of vodka out, poured two fingers into a whiskey tumbler, and threw it back. Steve checked his watch and found that it was only noon.

 _Christ._ If she could start that early and still keep it together, maybe he’d have to get the story out of Tony instead.

Sam came up behind Steve, about to excitedly explain some gadget he’d come across, when a loud clang erupted outside. Tony had finally shown up, and they watched, Sam with barely concealed awe, as the balcony came apart to detach Tony’s suit. Natasha pulled out another tumbler and poured another round.

“I should have known you liked to start the party early,” Tony said with approval as he came to a stop next to the bar. He clinked his glass against Natasha’s before throwing the shot back with her and shuddering. “Damn, that’s good. Is that the stuff you ordered? I should have kept you on.” He grinned, and Natasha patted his cheek with more force than was strictly necessary.

“I wasn’t yours to keep in the first place,” she reminded him, rolling her eyes as she turned to the sink to rinse the glasses. Tony turned and headed for Steve, who was still surprised that there was no blue glow under Tony’s ubiquitous Black Sabbath t-shirt. Last time he and Natasha had been in town, Tony had regaled anyone who would listen with the story of his insane Christmas while Pepper rolled her eyes and whispered what really happened to Nat whenever Tony adjusted the tale. Tony had announced that he was literally a changed man, and even though he was still a complete pain in the ass, Steve kind of believed him.

“Tony, this is Sam Wilson, VA counselor and former Air Force pararescue,” Steve said, hoping that Sam wasn’t hyperventilating yet--the last thing Tony needed was another admirer. “Sam, this is Tony Stark--”

“--He knows who I am,” Tony interrupted, sticking his hand out to Sam. “I hope you brought those wings,” he continued. “I gotta say, they’re more impressive than anything either of these two idiots can do.” He ducked instinctively to avoid the corkscrew Natasha threw at him; Steve deftly caught it instead.

Sam broke out into a wide grin. “Glad to meet someone who agrees. The wings got destroyed during the fight, but I still have the specs for them in my bag downstairs. I was thinking we could recalibrate the propulsion--”

“Hey, nerds,” Natasha cut in, squeezing herself between them, “you’ve got all weekend to geek out about that. Can we talk food? I haven’t had anything besides coffee and vodka, and this one” --she nudged Steve-- “will throw a patriotic temper tantrum if he doesn’t eat within the hour.” Steve, who had been known to get extra crabby when hungry on missions (“hangry” had been the term Nat had used), could only shrug in agreement.

“Killjoy,” Tony muttered. “Now I remember why I fired you.” He took Sam by the shoulder and led the group past the elevator and into a hall lined with more floor-to-ceiling windows. “JARVIS, buddy, is there some kind of lunch, thing, arrangement? I don’t think today’s the day for the good captain to experience my cooking.”

“Hard pass on that option,” Natasha murmured to Steve; Tony shot her an insulted look.

“Indeed, sir,” the AI replied, echoing in the small hall. “Miss Potts is in the kitchen with takeout.” JARVIS finished talking just as the small group reached the kitchen, where Pepper was arranging boxes of Chinese food on the black marble island. Tony immediately darted to her, and nearly knocked a box of wontons to the floor as he dipped her into a dramatic kiss. Steve and Sam looked at opposite corners of the room with great interest, while Natasha let a small smile slip onto her usually impassive face. (She would never admit it to anyone, but she thought it was sweet that Tony was so obviously in love.) Once she was righted again, Pepper absently patted her hair and stared into the distance for a moment before turning to her newly arrived guests.

“Wow. Sorry,” she said, shooting a fond-but-exasperated glare at Tony, who didn’t look the least bit sorry as he snaked one arm around her waist and used his free hand to crack open a fortune cookie. “Anyway. Steve, Natasha, I’m glad you’re back, and safe, for that matter. Sam, it’s lovely to meet you.” She smiled widely before slipping out of Tony’s grasp to pull plates and bowls out of the sleek black cabinets that lined the wall.

“Where’s the little bird?” Tony asked once he’d finished crunching through his fortune cookie. He glanced at Sam. “Oh, the other bird--shit, that’s going to take some getting used to.”

“Agent Barton was asleep when I stopped by his room,” Pepper replied as she stuck spoons into the boxes. “I’m sure he’ll be up to a visiting hour once we’re done here.” It was phrased as a blanket statement, but Steve caught Pepper’s gaze lingering significantly on Natasha before she directed her attention to preventing Tony from adding five eggrolls to his plate.

Tony and Sam spent the entirety of lunch discussing the design of Sam’s new wings, and shot away to Tony’s lab as soon as they were done eating. Steve worked steadily through his plate, listening to Natasha and Pepper talk about shoes and the stock market as if they were old friends. He remembered that they’d worked together for a week during Natasha’s nebulous Stark Industries infiltration, so perhaps they actually _were_ old friends. Which was nice for her. Steve held the belief that Natasha needed more friends, and if any civilian could hold their own with Natasha, it was definitely Pepper Potts. She was sharp, organized, and could handily put Tony in his place. When the Extremis drug was still running through her system, Steve thought she could have given Nat a run for her money. He tuned back into their conversation as he heard his name.

“Sorry, what was that?”

Pepper grinned. “I was just asking if you’d also like to visit Agent Barton? Natasha was just asking after him.” She raised her eyebrows at him for a second before beginning to collect the used plates and utensils.

“ _Was_ she now?” Steve asked, tilting his head and watching Natasha glare back. He ignored this and jumped up to help Pepper carry the dishes to the sink. “Has she mentioned the necklace?” he asked in a conspiratorial tone loud enough for Natasha to hear across the room. “It’s shaped like an arrow, but that’s, you know, just a coincidence.”

“Of course,” Pepper easily agreed, head swiveling in an unsubtle attempt to see the necklace tucked under the neck of Natasha’s grey t-shirt. “Lots of people just happen to wear jewelry that symbolically connects them to their coworkers.”

“You’re not funny, either of you,” Natasha loftily informed them as she carried beer bottles and glasses to the sink. She glared at Steve, then at Pepper, and he had to laugh at how much she looked like the older woman’s rebellious younger sister, especially considering that she was dwarfed by Pepper’s sky high heels. “I’m going to visit my _friend,_ Agent Barton, now,” Natasha said finally, mouth set in a mulish line.

Pepper laughed. “I’ll take you there,” she offered. “I know it’s your thing to know how places are laid out, but we’ve done some renovations, so you might get lost. Steve, you’ll be alright?” Steve nodded and watched the two stride down the hall, Pepper laughing and Natasha scowling. Alone, he finished the dishes and arranged any leftover boxes in the fridge, then set off down the hall in search of entertainment. After strolling through a number of strange light fixtures and what looked like some highly illegal Chitauri armor remnants, Steve found himself in a library. Most of the books were high-level engineering textbooks, but there was a small selection of mechanical books with words Steve could understand, and he told himself that at the very least there’d be some diagrams. He settled himself on the comfortable couch in Stark’s library, mashing the throw pillow until it was the perfect shape to prop him up.

If it got too confusing, he’d just go back to playing Pokemon.

 ---

Natasha truly liked Pepper. The woman was cutthroat in the boardroom, dazzling at charity galas, and could rock the hell out of a pair of Louboutins. She hadn’t expected for them to become close when she’d infiltrated Stark Industries, because she’d set herself up as the sexy assistant trope that a woman like Pepper would hate even if she hadn’t been vaguely in love with Tony; but Pepper, unlike Tony, was an adult, and knew how to gather assets to her in a time of crisis. The two of them had spent enough time together putting out Tony’s fires that they’d somehow become friends, and Pepper was the sort of person who could forgive a duplicitous spy if it meant lives had been saved.

That being said, Natasha would have happily jumped off the roof to avoid this particular line of questioning.

“ _So,_ are you two an item, then?” Pepper asked, heels clicking at a fast clip that Natasha did not want to keep up with.

“You know I’m a spy, right?” she responded coolly. “I could lie to you on a polygraph and you’d never know.”

“That’s a yes, then,” Pepper said with a knowing smile. Natasha frowned.

“No, it’s not,” she snapped back as the elevator closed behind them. “Barton and I are partners--”

“With friendship necklaces!”

“--and I wouldn’t compromise such a critical work relationship,” Natasha finished loudly. She folded her arms and leaned against the wall of the elevator, recognizing and hating the fact that she was acting like a child. “Plus, only I have a necklace,” she finished lamely, mumbling into her collar.

“Oh, so it’s totally normal for your _work partner,_ ” Pepper stretched the words sarcastically, “to give you jewelry? Is this a thing SHIELD coworkers do? Did Fury give Maria a nice pair of eyepatch-shaped diamond earrings for Christmas?” The elevator dinged and they stepped out.

“Now that would be hilarious,” Natasha deflected weakly. She had the training to discuss anything from European nobility to third world water supply; she should be better at this. It shouldn’t be that hard to lie about something that, really, didn’t even exist. She and Clint--no, she and _Barton_ \--were just partners, and she didn’t intend let anything compromise that, not even Barton himself.

“Wow, you’re really off your game,” Pepper bluntly informed her as they moved down the hallway towards Clint’s guest room. She paused in front of a door at the end of an east-facing hallway. “It’s got a great view,” she said in explanation, finally dropping the subject. Natasha understood. Clint wasn’t a morning person, but he did love a nice view, especially of a sunrise. In another life, maybe he’d be a photographer, or one of those awful sunrise yoga instructors.

Natasha smiled at the idea of Clint tying himself into a knot while droning about his aligned chakras or whatever, but only said, “Thanks. I think I can take it from here.” The smile Pepper turned away with was too smug for Natasha’s liking, but that was a problem for later. Could she convince Pepper that she’d been having a torrid affair with Bruce this whole time?

_Probably not._

The handle turned easily under her hand, and Natasha slipped into a tastefully decorated room filled with the afternoon sun pouring through the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window. There was a solid cherry sleigh bed (unmade, of course), a matching chest of drawers, and a door that probably led to a bathroom on the left side of the room. The right side contained a sitting area with a couch in butter soft leather, an armchair upholstered in a coordinating stripe, and a coffee table crafted of distressed dark wood. The walls were the color of heavily creamed coffee, and the one facing the couch boasted a large Stark Screen that was currently blasting what looked like a football video game.

Clint lounged on the couch, his right arm properly arranged in a sling to reduce movement in his shoulder. A corner of his bandage poked out of the purple v-neck shirt that was dotted with bleach stains (Clint Barton, forever incapable of doing laundry correctly). He had kicked his high top sneakers off under the armchair, and his feet in mismatched socks (see previous note) were propped on the coffee table. His hands nearly dropped the sleek game controller when Natasha firmly shut the door and stepped into his line of vision.

“Well, look who finally came back,” he drawled, pausing the game and reaching up to adjust the volume on his hearing aids. “I’ve been poked and prodded for a week with no break, thanks to you.” He jabbed a finger at her, then winced and rotated his injured shoulder.

“Yes, and you _clearly_ didn’t need said medical attention,” Natasha replied drily. She positioned herself carefully on the armchair, which was stuffed exactly right. “You could come out on a mission with me tomorrow and put that archaic weapon of yours to use.” They threw more good-natured trash talk at each other while Natasha visually cased the room for Clint’s weapons cache. There was a handgun taped under the coffee table, the outline of a knife just visible in the the knit throw at the foot of the bed, and--she wiggled experimentally--a pair of throwing stars nestled between the cushions of the chair she sat in. His custom-made bow was in glaring absence. “Speaking of said outdated weaponry, where’s the bow?”

Clint smirked. “Took you long enough. I thought you’d notice immediately.” Natasha lowered a glare at him and he grinned before explaining.

“I made friends with one of the valets at the hotel in Zagreb. That asshole I was sharing a suite with, Krolo, had this utterly depraved party one night and tried to make this one kid clean the whole place on his own, with no tip. Bullshit. I doubled back and paid him _way_ more than he’d make for the entire month. Kid became my informant, more or less. Helped me keep tabs on those jackasses. Anyway, I gave him a call after you abandoned me here, asked him to pack up my stuff while Krolo was down at the pool bar as usual. The bow and my suits, both currently in the closet, arrived two days later.”

“Seriously, the suits, too?”

“Hey, they were brand name, custom made, and paid for by SHIELD--” Clint broke off when he realized he’d mentioned the elephant in the room. “Shit.”

Natasha waved a dismissive hand as she got up and relocated herself to the couch next to him. They sat in silence, knees just barely knocking for long moments.

“Sitwell was really Hydra?” Clint finally asked, looking up from his hands.

“Yeah,” Natasha replied quietly, gaze centered on his. “Sitwell, Rumlow, all of STRIKE except us, apparently.” She had to raise an eyebrow at that irony: STRIKE Team Delta, comprised of a lawless archer and a Russian spy with no loyalty, somehow ending up the most loyal and law-abiding team.

Clint sighed. “Sitwell owed me, like, $300. I’m never going to get that back now.” This offense seemed to be almost as egregious as being a traitor. “STRIKE was always a bunch of assholes, though, especially Rumlow. Why do you think I wasn’t working with a partner when I dragged you into headquarters?”

“I just assumed it was because you’re a pain in the ass, so nobody wanted to work with you.”

Clint dragged his hand down his face. “Hilarious. Are you going to tell me the whole story now, or what? Tony can’t tell a story without JARVIS to be his straight man, Pepper just gives me pity eyes, and Bruce I’m pretty sure was hiding in his lab cave for the whole thing.”

Natasha looked away and pulled her lower lip between her teeth, a childhood habit that had once been ruthlessly trained out of her. Normally, she could deliver a concise and efficient mission report even if her hair was on fire, because she was the Black fucking Widow, and she got shit done; but this wasn’t a mission report, because there were no more missions, because there was no more SHIELD.

Clint nudged her knee with his, bringing her attention flying back to him. “Please, Nat?” he asked softly. “I have--I need to know.”

It fell out of her then, the story she’d needed to share finally forcing its way out. She felt hot tears trickle down her face as she described Fury’s “death,” and laughed at Steve’s pathetic attempts at stealth and subterfuge at the mall. Camp Lehigh and Arnim Zola’s robotic existence was a solemn discussion, and her voice rose in anger as she recounted being shot and captured by STRIKE, discovering the Winter Soldier’s true identity, and reuniting with a distinctly alive Fury. By the time she was telling Clint what had taken place between herself, Fury, and Pierce in the World Security Council, her tone was fierce and determined.

“I dumped everything on the internet. Every alias I had on file, everything SHIELD had on the Red Room--all the secrets I’d held on to for as long as I can remember. It was--”

“ _Please_ don’t be cliche and say ‘liberating.’”

“No. It was--alienating. Effacing.” Natasha shook her head, a rueful smile playing across her lips as she stared at her hands. “When I was young, I thought I wanted to be normal, un-secretive; I wanted to be, yeah, liberated. Now everything I am is out there and I--I’ve been made of secrets for so long. Without them, who am I supposed to be now?” She looked at Clint searchingly, hoping he could wrap up her lost feelings with a pretty bow, and knowing he couldn’t. She’d learned long ago that they were both screwed up in their own ways, that Clint had just as many identity issues as she did--more, now, after New York.

Clint looked back at her in that quiet, soul-piercing way he had that made her want to jump through the plate glass window. “There’s always been more to you than secrets, Nat,” he said. His voice was gentle and laced with something she Did Not Want to Talk About. The arrow on her necklace felt like hot lead. She was such an idiot to start this conversation.

“Yeah. There’s sex, too,” she said breezily, trying to steer the conversation far, far away from where Clint was heading. “‘Secrets and Sex: the Unauthorized Natasha Romanoff Lifetime Original Movie.’” Clint looked away, a slight frown on his face, and Natasha bit her lip again and thought, _Oh, shit._ But a moment later, the easygoing Clint that she knew how to handle snorted at her joke, and she pretended that her throat hadn’t nearly closed up. “Yours’ll be called, ‘The Anachronistic Weapon: Clint Barton, Agent Assassin.’”

Clint rolled his eyes. “I think you may be overestimating the average vocabulary of people who watch Lifetime Original Movies.” Natasha shrugged in agreement. They sat in a different kind of silence, a thoughtful one no longer fraught with the angst of SHIELD or The Thing Natasha was determined not to address. Eventually, Clint snapped off the video game and found a crappy Lifetime Original Movie for them to make fun of.

“Hey,” Clint said at the commercial, “Whoever you end up being now that SHIELD’s gone--probably just as good as who you were before; but either way, I look forward to getting to know you again.”

Natasha forced her face to stay amused. “That might have been just a little too cheesy, Barton,” she said, striving for lightness.

Clint looked at her again in that piercing way, for a too-long minute, then grinned. “I don’t think so.”

_Oh, shit._

 

  **FOUR**

The crackle of thunder roused Steve from what a been a pleasant nap. He looked down at the book he’d intended to read, and found that he’d only made it through about three pages. Oh, well. It _had_ been a pretty nice nap.

Another clap of thunder brought him to his feet and heading out the door. The clouds gathering outside the windows confirmed his suspicions that Thor had arrived at last. Steve wandered until he found his way back to the lounge, where Thor and his rippling cape were striding confidently down the balcony.

(Sometimes, just sometimes, Steve thought he wanted a cape. They were so… Grand. Majestic. It really wouldn’t work with his shield, at all, but that didn’t stop him from doodling remodels of his uniform in the back of his sketch book.)

As Thor drew closer, Steve noticed that he was hauling a large barrel on one shoulder. “Greetings, Captain!” Thor boomed as soon as he entered the room. He dropped the barrel by the bar, then eagerly crossed the room to embrace Steve. As they parted, the scales of Thor’s armor fell away to reveal shockingly normal jeans, boat shoes, and a polo as red as his cape. Steve gaped for a minute before remembering that Thor was now residing in England with his astrophysicist girlfriend, Jane.

“Jane says these are the clothes of Midgardian men,” Thor said in explanation, uncertainty creeping into his tone as he watched Steve’s face. “I have been trying to maintain a normal Midgardian profile.”

Steve’s heart went out to him. He, too, was still adjusting to the strange men’s fashion (designer exercise sneakers?) of the 21st century. “You nailed it, buddy,” he said sincerely, clapping him on the shoulder, and Thor’s face brightened. “So, what’s in the barrel?” Steve asked, but was denied an answer as Pepper practically ran into the room, heels clicking erratically.

“Oh… my,” she said breathlessly as Thor beamed at her, oblivious as always about his effect on women. Pepper stood, more or less transfixed, until Thor kindly asked, “Would you be the pepper pot, then?”

Pepper let out a small squeak of a laugh and shook her head. “Oh! No. Well. Yes, my name _is_ Pepper Pott _s_ , well, actually, it’s _Virginia_ Potts, Pepper is just a nickname; but, no, I’m not an actual… pepper… pot.” Her cheeks flushed. Steve personally thought that Tony needed to get up here before Pepper forgot he existed.

“I can see that,” Thor said in his grave way, still smiling gently while Pepper practically melted.

“Uh, JARVIS, could you get Tony up here? Maybe the rest of the gang, too?” Steve called, stepping in before Pepper did actually melt. As the AI responded, Clint and Natasha strolled in, bantering about whatever bad television they’d just watched. Thor greeted Natasha with a warm hug and Clint, who was still wary of all things Asgardian, with an awkward left handshake due to Clint’s sling. Natasha, noting Pepper’s glazed expression, pulled the other woman away.

“We saw the clouds gather out of the blue and assumed it was you,” Clint explained. He scanned the room, evidently searching for Tony. “I hope this means we can eat something soon. I’m starving.” They sank into couches, and were soon joined by Natasha and Pepper, who had managed to de-starstruck herself. Clint was complaining for the third time about how hungry he was when JARVIS cut in.

“Miss Potts, Mister Stark is in the dining room with Mister Wilson and Doctor Banner, and Agent Hill is on her way. There is also food, if you care to join.” Clint was off the couch the second JARVIS said “food,” and the group followed him to the dining room, Natasha hanging back to explain the function and workings of JARVIS to Thor.

Dinner was happy and loud, with jokes and stories flying in all directions. Steve shared his discovery that his childhood best friend was still alive, Thor discussed his adventures in England (“I have had the most delicious food and it is called a crumpet!”), and Tony told an even more outrageous version of his Christmas fiasco, which Pepper didn’t even try to correct. Steve noted, but was not surprised, that Tony pointedly pulled Bruce into every discussion, trying to make the shy man come out of his shell. Sam participated, and everyone tried to include him, but he spent most of the meal following each story with an expression of permanent enthrallment. Steve was seriously concerned that, come Monday, he and Natasha would be literally dragging a highly uncooperative Falcon back to Washington. Natasha had nearly everyone convinced that Clint had been swanning around Croatia in a thong (“Why would you say that? I would _never!_ ”) when Maria Hill made a sudden appearance in the dining room.

Steve had worked with Maria for a while, since New York, but this was the first time he’d seen her outside of a SHIELD capacity. The ubiquitous blue catsuit had been replaced by a grey pencil skirt, green blouse, and black heels that gave Pepper’s stilts some real competition. Maria was just as reserved as ever, but Steve sensed something different, more uncomfortable, in the way she held herself tightly in the doorway.

“Maria!” Pepper called brightly, “are you going to join us for dinner?” She started to rise from her seat, but Maria waved a hand to say no. Her lips pursed and her eyes ricocheted away. _Definitely guilty,_ Steve thought. _But of what?_

“No, no, you--you probably aren’t going to want me to stay,” she said, voice heavy. The open curiosity on everyone’s faces began to shift towards caution. Steve saw Natasha reach for her boot out of the corner of his eye. The room fell silent as Maria began to speak.

“We all know that SHIELD had secrets, secrets I was sworn to keep for the safety of our country, or our citizens, or our agents. There were projects and undertaking that you all lacked the clearance to know about, obviously, and I always thought that was the right way to do things. But now…” She trailed off, eyes glancing over her shoulder through the doorway, then continued with more resolve. “But now SHIELD as it was has been demolished, and though there are many secrets that I will continue to keep, this is one that I can no longer hold in good conscience. There’s someone I think you all need to see.” Maria stepped to the door and gently beckoned before stepping aside to reveal--

Natasha’s gun was raised, aimed, and cocked faster than Steve could blink.

Phil Coulson stood in the doorway, wearing the same suit, the same tie, even, that he’d been wearing that day on the helicarrier. He had the same kind eyes, and his smile was only slightly less bland than it had once been.

For a group of super powered and talented individuals, their reaction times, aside from Natasha’s, were abysmal.

“What the hell kind of joke is this, Maria?” Natasha’s voice was low and slightly uneven, but her gun remained steady. “I know, _I know,_ that working with Stark can drive you crazy, but this isn’t even remotely funny.”

“It’s not a joke, Natasha.” He sounded exactly the same, maybe a little sadder. It was like it was just yesterday that he was telling Steve about his vintage trading cards. He looked real to Steve. “It’s me. It’s Phil.”

Natasha’s eyes widened as she heard his voice, but she didn’t lower her gun. “Phil Coulson is dead,” she responded, her voice cold and flat. “I attended his funeral--we all did.” She gestured around the table, where everyone was still pinned to their seats in shock. “I leave fresh flowers at his grave every week,” she went on after a moment, as nobody else spoke up. “I check in on the cellist he was dating. I--I keep his Captain American memorabilia in storage so--so it won’t get sold off.”

Steve’s attention--really, everyone’s attention--was now completely centered on Natasha. He watched as she struggled, then dug somewhere inside herself for extra conviction. With new strength, she said, in a voice like a razor, “So whatever _the fuck_ you are, Kree or Skrull or Hydra pet project, you’d better find a new appearance, _fast_ , or I will put a bullet between your eyes.”

Maria tried to step in front of Phil and explain, but he held her off. With both hands raised, he took a single step closer to the table.

“Natasha,” he said, the same sad smile on his face, “You’ve read your entire file front to back, a million times over by now, so you and I both know that what I’m about to say isn’t in it. This isn’t a joke.

“A few weeks after you defected to SHIELD, we were on a training mission in Belgrade. You found something while out in the field, something that you kept and brought back with home with you. We had finished your debrief, and you showed it to me. It was a wooden building block, for children, painted with Cyrillic letters. There was one side that still had paint on it, a bright red that was peeling, and it had an H, the Cyrillic N. I asked you why you kept it and you said -- you said, ‘You know, Phil, I think I had a set like this before the Red Room. I can’t remember. But I figure since I don’t exactly have a baby book to look back on, this will just have to do.’”

It was silent for two entire minutes. Pepper stared at Tony with desperate tears in her eyes. Tony stared at Phil in complete horror. Phil stared at Natasha, and Natasha stared at nothing.

“Phil?” she said finally, disbelievingly, in a voice so thick with tears that Steve’s throat ached in sympathy. Phil nodded, once. Natasha sobbed, dropped the gun with a clatter that echoed, and ran from the room.

Tony filled the void the only way he knew how. “I guess the Russian Robot has feelings, after all.” Pepper frowned, and Steve knew that Tony was just trying to relieve the tension before it became too much for Bruce to handle, but damn it if his and Clint’s eyes didn’t meet across the table in mutual flashing rage in that moment.

“Natasha,” Clint growled as he levered himself out of his chair with his good arm, “is _not_ a robot.” He glared at Tony, but didn’t even glance at Phil as he ran out of the room, calling after Natasha.

Steve would have liked to follow, but Natasha didn’t need him right now, while this situation clearly did. He looked at Maria, who sent him a tight unhappy smile, and Phil, who looked abjectly miserable. What a goddamn mess.

“You two need to sit down, right now, and tell us everything,” Steve said, pressing his most commanding tone into his voice. “I don’t care what secrets Fury told you to keep. He’s not here, and he’s not in charge anymore. Not to mention--” Steve broke off and gestured to the hurt, confused, and angry faces around the table. “You owe all of us an explanation.”

Phil and Maria sank heavily into the chairs recently vacated by Clint and Natasha, and began to talk. They were professionals, even in the face of the bizarre; Steve was unnerved to hear them talk of alien blood transfusions and a memory alteration project called TAHITI with relative ease. While Maria remained her stoic self throughout, Phil’s voice wavered as he described the moment he discovered how really, truly dead he’d been.

“I figured it was for the best,” he said, looking at each of the table’s occupants in the eye. “You had all made peace, moved on. Audrey--the cellist--she wasn’t meant to have some kind of, I don’t know, undead man in her life. It was painful, but also… less complicated.”

Steve surveyed the table as he tried to get a handle on his emotions. Bruce stared at the ceiling, breathing in deliberately measured intervals, while Thor solemnly considered Phil’s dejected face. Pepper was crying quietly, Tony’s jaw worked in barely contained rage, and Sam, it seemed, had shown himself out who knew how long before.

It was a disaster, Steve decided, a goddamn nightmare. Another scheme of Fury’s to keep them all exactly where he wanted. He couldn’t blame Maria for following orders, or blame Phil for not wanting to intrude on lives that had moved on--Steve knew those feelings too well. But Fury? To have this little trust in the Avengers; to keep someone so important to Natasha, Clint, Tony, Pepper, stashed away until the next time he needed some leverage?

_Despicable. Deplorable._

Steve stood abruptly. “Maria, Phil, thank you for coming here tonight. I know we all appreciate your honesty.” Tony scoffed; Steve pressed on. “I think it would be best, though, if  you both left now. There are obviously a lot of emotions that need to be processed here, and that needs to happen without you.”

“But, Steve,” Maria objected, “there are still some very important matters to be discussed--”

“And they can be discussed tomorrow, when we’ve all had some time to adjust. An announcement like this, it needs some time.” He crossed his arms and leveled a hard stare, immovable, until Phil and Maria stood and headed for the door. Phil turned before leaving.

“I’m sorry,” he said, so blatantly miserable that Steve honestly did feel a bit bad. “I never wanted this. I should have stayed dead.” He ducked his head and followed Maria out the door.

“I am _not_ meeting with them tomorrow!” Tony all but shouted once they had gone. “Not tomorrow, and not ever. Are you _kidding_ me? No. No fucking way.” He clenched his jaw and pulled Pepper, who was still crying, under his arm.

“I think I should probably leave now,” Bruce said evenly, speaking without prompting for the first time all night. “It would be best for all of us.” he pushed his chair back and stalked from the room, fists opening and closing. Nobody said anything. It was heavy, and silent, and Steve would have given almost anything to bring back the chatter from dinner that now felt so long ago.

Pepper finally wiped her face and stood. “I’m going to light a fire in the lounge, because right now I’d like some comfort, company, and warmth. You are all welcome to join.” Her voice was stuffy, but as firm as she could make it, and Steve loved her in that moment.

“A great idea,” he said with a sincerity that sounded hollow even to himself. “I’ll get some marshmallows.”

 ---

When Natasha finally stalked back into the dining room, murder flashing in her swollen eyes, it was dark.

“Maybe everyone went to sleep?” Clint’s voice, two steps behind her, was hopeful. He had tried to convince her to get into bed once she had stopped sobbing, but it was too early, and she was too full of violence.

Fury, Coulson, Maria. She’d grown to trust them, a process she’d never believed could happen, and for what? For betrayal. She had been an idiot to believe that she’d been paying her penance by joining SHIELD.  A complete fool to believe that anyone would ever trust her, not with her origins. Fury had been a father figure to her in these years, but, she remembered with a knife twist of emotions, this was what all her previous father figures had done: use, manipulate, abandon.

She had been had, and fuck if it didn’t make her want to beat the shit out of someone, a no-holds-barred dirty fight that would distract her from the hurt that was swirling around her heart. Clint was her favorite sparring partner, but he wouldn’t fight her when she was like this. She’d never hurt Pepper, and Tony would chicken out to protect his stupid face. Steve would never hurt a lady, unless forced to, Thor could fend her off while he read a newspaper, and Bruce… well, she wanted to fight, but she didn’t want to _die._

So that left… her. She would beat the shit out of herself.

She was nearly to the lounge when Clint caught up. He reached out and grabbed her forearm, and she froze. “Let. Go.”

“Nat, come on,” Clint pleaded, sliding his hand down to hers and tugging her back. “I know that shit just got, like, _real_ crazy, but throwing Tony through the window isn’t going to help.”

Natasha yanked her hand free. “I’m not going to destroy Tony,” she said ominously before striding into the lounge and surveying the scene. A wall of storm clouds hovered outside the dark windows, clearly summoned by Thor’s mood. Steve and Pepper were huddled around the fire with him, showing the god how to make s’mores in a halfhearted attempt at lightness.  Tony sat apart, watching the others blankly.

“Nat, _no_ \--”

“I’m here to get shitfaced,” Natasha announced to the room at large before stomping to the bar. Nobody moved as she pulled out the vodka, poured way too much into a whiskey tumbler, and threw it back in one harsh gulp. She barely felt any effect as the liquid hit her stomach; she needed more, much more.

“That’s the best idea anyone has had all day.” Tony broke the silence and leapt out of his chair. “Whiskey for me, comrade.”

“Fuck you,” she replied, but poured his drink along with her second as he came towards the bar. Close up, Natasha could see the shadows looming behind Tony’s eyes. She clinked her glass against his, hoping the liquor would dull both of their pain.

Pepper threw her hands up in surrender before allowing Tony to pour her a glass of red wine approximately the size of her head. Thor shoved a tap into his mysterious barrel, which was revealed to be a highly alcoholic Asgardian mead that flowed a sparkling brown and made even Steve cough as it went down. Clint, still on a painkiller regimen and thus unable to drink anything stronger than soda, glowered in the corner and watched Natasha spiral.

An hour later, Steve was drunkenly instructing an equally drunk Thor on how to swing his hammer like Babe Ruth, Pepper and Tony were clumsily swaying on the coffee table, Clint was sulking on the balcony, and Natasha wasn’t nearly drunk enough. She couldn’t feel her face, or her fingers, but she could still feel the betrayal and rejection squeezing her heart. She gave up on the tumbler and drank directly from the bottle. Clint stormed inside and grabbed it away.

“I think you’ve had enough,” he said quietly, a steely edge to his voice. “Don’t make me carry you out of here.”

Natasha snatched the bottle back for a deep gulp. “I’d like to see you try,” she sputtered, swinging the nearly empty bottle towards his injured shoulder, where it just bumped the bandage.

_Oops._

Clint’s eyebrows came together into a glare, but his eyes were hurt. That’s what she did, though, right? Ever since she was a little girl, she hurt people. She lied and she cheated and she stole. And she killed. Clint should have known better than to trust her--nobody else did.

She turned away from Clint and clambered onto the now vacant coffee table, launching herself into some traditional Russian dance with those stupid kicks, and of course Steve and Thor tried to join in. Soon they were all shouting and kicking and drunkenly clinking glasses, and a fuzzy feeling fell around Natasha like a fur coat. This was the drunkest she’d ever been, by far, but she couldn’t feel her heart breaking anymore, so she went back to the bar for another handle of Russian Standard.

Thor was leading Steve and Tony in an Asgardian drinking song when she stumbled back to the group; Pepper, she hazily noticed, had been pulled aside to be lectured by Clint, and was nodding furiously as only the very drunk could do. Thor’s drinking song ended in a loud cheer, followed immediately by the crash of three very strong and inebriated men smashing their drinking glasses on the ground. Pepper shrieked as shards flew, some catching Natasha in the face when her dulled reflexes failed to react. She didn’t even feel the sting. Unfazed--too intoxicated to do anything else--she took another drink.

Clint made his way to the stereo controls and punched the music off. “That’s it for tonight, folks,” he said in a voice that was meant to be pleasant but didn’t quite get there. “Steve and Thor, can you try and make this place look less like a frat party?”

“A what?” they asked together before falling to the ground laughing.

“Just clean up, okay?” Clint snapped. He turned to Tony, annoyance plain on his face. “I’m going to take Natasha to bed.” Tony snickered and Clint, impossibly, frowned more. “I’d recommend you get Pepper out of here. She’s had a lot to drink, and she doesn’t have any shoes on. Watch out for glass.” Tony scooped Pepper into his arms and carried her past Natasha down the hallway, murmuring to her about grumpy hawks and other things that Natasha _really_ didn’t want to know about.

They stared at each other across the room, over the heads of Steve and Thor crawling around looking for large pieces of glass, still drunk and giggling. “Put the bottle down,” Clint commanded. Natasha wanted to be contrary, but she was tired and dizzy, and her hands were already lowering the handle to the table. Clint stomped across the room until they were nose to nose. “You’re going to bed,” he said in the voice that Natasha usually didn’t argue with. “Are you going to walk, or am I going to have to carry you?”

Natasha’s lip curled. “Like you can.”

Wrong answer. She’d had enough vodka to black out the average woman of her height and weight, and while she was far from an average woman, she was still no match for Clint in this state. He lowered his good shoulder to her waist, wrapped his arm around her thighs, and suddenly she was thrown over his shoulder, and they were leaving.

 _This is embarrassing._ Even her inner monologue was slurred. _Clint does have nice shoulders, though._

_This is probably hurting him. I should get down. I can totally walk._

_But he’s so mad, and his butt is kinda nice when he’s storming around like this._

_No, it’s not. Shut the fuck up, Natasha, you are so drunk._

It wasn’t long before Clint kicked his door open, stomped to the bed, and unceremoniously dropped her on it. “Go to sleep,” he said, already heading back to the door. He was massaging his bad shoulder, and Natasha felt a jab of guilt.

“I don’t have my bag or anything,” she called, working very hard not to slur her words together. Clint turned and glared at her so mutinously that she wished the bed would swallow her whole. “Never mind.” He grunted and slammed the door behind him.

Natasha labored to kick her feet out of her boots, set her handgun on the nightstand, and fell back onto the pillow, trying to ignore her now-throbbing head. What a fucking trainwreck. She was drunk (that was a first), Steve was _Asgardian_ drunk (also a first), and Clint was furious at her (not even close to a first). She knew he was hurt that she’d chosen to hit the self-destruct button rather than talk to him. She knew he was reeling over Phil, too. But he should’ve known, because she was the Black Widow, nothing more than a walking weapon, violence on legs. Wasn’t she? Her history wasn’t a secret anymore, but it was still there. Everyone but Clint seemed to know that she was duplicitous, unfeeling, backstabbing. Damaged. Everyone else knew that she was never going to redeem herself enough to be trustworthy.

Natasha rolled over and buried her face into the pillow. It smelled like Clint, and her smile was sad as her eyelids fluttered shut.

Everyone else knew she was irredeemable, and now Clint knew it, too.

 

  **FIVE**

Steve entered the kitchen the next morning to find Clint propped up on the bar, steaming mug of coffee in his hand and couch cushion lines still faintly visible on his face.

“Agent Barton,” he said in greeting as he poured himself a cup.

“Cap.” A pause, and a sip of coffee. “You know, I’m not really an agent anymore, now that SHIELD kicked the bucket. You can just call me Clint.”

“And I’m no longer in the Army, so you can just call me Steve.” He grinned and leaned next to Clint along the counter. “Thanks for your help cleaning up last night. Tony’s crazy vacuum cleaner was a little more than I could handle.” He shook his head and took a long draw of his coffee. “Last time I got drunk was before the serum. Literally seventy-something years ago. I was smaller than Nat--a single shot could put me down for the night.” He paused before cautiously adding, “Speaking of whom, is she okay?”

Clint made a face and went to the coffee machine for a refill. “ Yeah, she’ll be fine. Probably won’t have nearly the hangover she deserves, self-destructing like that.” Clint’s frown had about five different emotions in it, and Steve wasn’t sure if he should react to the statement or not, but Clint continued, “You don’t look nearly as bad as I thought you would, either, considering how much of that mead you put away.”

Steve smiled slightly. It had been freeing, to let go like that, to feel like a normal human being for once in his entire bizarre existence. If he had an addictive personality, he’d be worried about how much he’d enjoyed the carelessness that came with being drunk. “I guess the serum caught up and did its thing while I slept.”

“Handy.” They both fell silent as they sipped their coffee, enjoying the morning sun that streamed through the window. Steve, after a while, felt a rumble of hunger. Clint pointed him in the direction of the pantry, and soon Steve was frying bacon and sausage, scrambling eggs, and flipping pancakes. They were piling food on their plates, avoiding any conversational subject that led to Natasha, when Tony staggered in, silk pajamas and robe fluttering.

“Shh… Stop talking _immediately,_ ” he demanded, shading his eyes from the sunlight. Steve and Clint raised their voices and pretended Tony wasn’t there. “Fuck you guys,” Tony muttered, shuffling to the coffee machine and struggling for five minutes before actually managing to pour himself some coffee. He slumped into a chair next to Steve and dropped his head to the table, turning slightly green when Steve offered him some bacon.

Pepper dragged herself in a few minutes later, her bloodshot eyes and rumpled pajamas completely incongruous with her pristine CEO image. A lock of hair was attached to her face, possibly with drool, and she grunted inelegantly to answer all questions until she had downed two mugs of coffee.

Sam and Bruce appeared shortly after, and Sam dragged Steve into the pantry to interrogate him about who the hell Phil was. Steve explained as much as he could, and filled in what Sam had missed in Phil and Maria’s debrief.

“So, you’re telling me that Fury had this guy pumped full of alien blood or whatever, just so he could bring him back to life and then _not tell anyone?_ ” Sam was incredulous.

Steve wished it was the craziest thing he’d ever heard, but only replied, “Yep. And, if one of us had gone down--instead of Phil, I mean--it would have been our fate. Though I doubt Fury would have kept it a secret in that case.” Resentment and sarcasm weighted his voice. “Nick does love the grand picture of a superhero defending the world.”

“What happens next, then?” Sam asked after a long pause, raising his voice to be heard over Thor heartily greeting everyone a good morning and Tony shouting back for him to shut up.

Steve puffed out a sigh. “I honestly don’t know. They didn’t say all they wanted to, and you know how persistent Maria is--she’ll keep trying until she gets what she wants.” Another sigh. “Getting this group to agree to a second meeting, though, will be--”

“Impossible?”

“--I was going to say ‘highly unlikely,’ but you’re probably right. Everyone is a mess over this. Nat went on a bender last night and took the rest of us with her--you’ve seen the results.” Sam shook his head, muttering about missing the opportunity of a lifetime: partying with the Avengers, especially Tony Stark. Steve was recounting the events of the evening when Thor interrupted their conversation.

“Son of Wil! Captain!” he cheered upon entrance, apparently unfazed by finding his companions having a secret conversation in a closet. “You made your ancestors proud last night!” Thor clapped Steve on the shoulder with approval.

“Um, yeah, probably,” Steve responded. “Is there something you’re looking for?”

“Pop Tarts,” Thor announced. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “They are my weakness.” Sam laughed and handed over the blue box. Thor opened it and pulled out a silver wrapped Pop Tart, but didn’t leave. It wasn’t a large pantry, and Steve’s shoulders were brushing both Sam’s and Thor’s.

“Er, is there something else, Thor?” Steve asked. A distinctly shifty look, more suited for his brother’s face than his own, fell over the thunder god’s face. He hesitated, then ate an entire Pop Tart in one bite before responding.

“Natasha Romanoff has joined the breakfast party.” Steve was nonplussed. Natasha usually didn’t get dangerous until she’d at least had a cappuccino, and she actually liked Thor.

“So?” he asked. “Are you afraid she’s going to steal your Pop Tarts?”

Thor’s hand curled possessively around the blue carton. “No, though they are delicious enough that she might. You may have been too distracted by the mead last night, Captain, but Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton were most angry with each other last night.” Thor’s smile was self-deprecating. “I have made many blunders in my reckless youth, but even I know better than to get involved in a quarrel between two lovers.”

Sam choked on his coffee; Steve gave him a pat on the back that nearly sent him flying into a shelf of potato chips. “I think what Sam was trying to say, Thor, is that Natasha and Clint are just partners.” _In avoiding the obvious,_ Steve added privately.

Thor’s smile was wise. “Yes, in Midgard, romantic companions are often called ‘partners,’” he said, a hint of smugness in his voice. “Jane and her assistant Darcy have told me.”

This was not the time to get into romantic nomenclature with a thunder god. “Well, whatever they are or aren’t, we have more important things to discuss,” Steve said before marching out of the pantry.

Natasha, looking no more hungover than Steve, was deliberately stirring her coffee with what looked like a stiletto blade. Clint sat across from her, viciously stabbing his bacon and glowering. Neither spoke, but a dark field of energy radiated from them and affected the entire room. _Lovely_ , Steve thought with a sigh. He clapped his hands together and everyone looked up.

“Let’s talk about Maria and Phil,” he said authoritatively. Tony tried to walk away from the table, but Pepper pulled him back down. Amidst negative rumblings from all sides, Steve continued, “I’m not talking about forgiveness. They were wrong to lie to us, and while I forgive them, it doesn’t matter to me if you do or not. The fact is that they have more information that they’re willing to give us, and in the wake of SHIELD’s downfall, we’re now the definitive line of global defense. We need all the help we can get.” The gravity of his words sunk in, only the sound of percolating coffee breaking the quiet.

Tony slammed a hand on the table, paused to wince as the sound reverberated through his hangover-sensitized skull, and stood. “No. I’m not going.” Pepper tried to object, but Tony cut her off. “I would say that I’m sorry but, hm, I’m not. They have lied to us, to _everyone_ in this room, and I don’t trust them. We can protect the earth without their help.” He sat just as abruptly as he stood, murmuring an apology in Pepper’s ear.

Every Avenger spoke their piece, even though all Bruce said was a flat, emphatic, “Absolutely not.” Clint wasn’t ready to see Phil again, and refused. Thor readily agreed to the meeting, citing a desire to have as much information as possible, and although Steve’s eyebrows nearly flew off his face, he knew better than to argue when Natasha said that she’d go, too.

He grabbed her arm as they all dispersed for an hour before the meeting. Her gaze was wary in the second that their eyes connected before she looked away. “What, Rogers, you don’t think I can handle it?”

Steve was taken aback. “What? I--no, I just wanted to see if you were okay, considering that you drank your weight in vodka last night.” He looked down at her seriously, and thought he saw tears forming in her eyes. _What is going on here?_ “Natasha, look, is everything oka--”

“I’m Russian, Steve,” Natasha scoffed. “Remember? I’m fine.” She turned to walk away.

“And  you and Clint are just as fine, right?” Steve asked sarcastically, frowning. Natasha just barely paused.

“Fine, Steve, everything’s fine.” She vanished into a corridor. Steve was left staring at nothing, hands on his hips. The air still smelled like breakfast, and everything was absolutely not fine.

 ---

Natasha was propped up on the roof, staring at the scorch marks still leftover from Loki’s portal generator, when she heard someone breathing in the stairwell.

 _Steve,_ she identified from the breathing pattern. _Not surprising._ She hadn’t exactly been subtle when she’d left immediately after the last meeting. Steve and Clint had both called after her, but she was down hallways and up staircases in a flash, searching for fresh air. _Funny, usually it’s Clint who takes the rooftop._

Steve drew closer, coming to a stop ten feet in front of her. He didn’t say anything, but Natasha unconsciously read the microexpressions that ran across his face: _fear anger hurt happy sad…_ She set her face into a pleasantly neutral arrangement and waited for the lecture about peace and freedom, and how she fit into neither.

“Do you mind if I sketch you?”

Natasha again read his face: _discomfort sad anger fear._ Well, what did she care if Steve wanted to make an exit sketch before booting her from the team?

“Fine with me.” At her half shrug, Steve hesitated for a moment before pulling a sketchpad and pencil from his waistband. He awkwardly folded his long legs under himself, and Natasha stared back as he began to watch her. He studied her for two long minutes before the pencil began to scratch across the page and Natasha allowed herself to think.

The meeting with Maria and Phil had been exceedingly polite and not a little chilly. Maria had announced with a brittle smile that Phil had been named the new director of SHIELD, and Phil had beamed, the bastard. Like SHIELD was still something to be proud of. Like putting someone full of alien serums in charge of global security made _any_ sense. Like Maria hadn’t been Fury’s left fucking eye, let alone hand. Like he was even supposed to be sitting in that room with them, looking like Steve had ripped his stupid trading cards in half.

They’d ushered Phil and Maria out (all the way out; Stark refused to let “those liars” enjoy his living room, regardless of the fact that Maria was his head of security), then launched into an Avengers-only debate while Pepper and Sam got to watch TV or at least have more fun than Natasha did. She suffered through the standard fifteen minutes of Steve and Tony arguing about nothing before finally leading them all to the conclusion that no, they shouldn’t work under SHIELD supervision, because had anyone turned on the news lately? The last thing the Avengers needed was to be associated with public enemy #1. Tony had (naturally) argued just to be combative, and even Bruce had done some yelling before they’d at last unanimously agreed to be an independent entity, with Steve as their leader.

It had felt farcical to Natasha, to sit and argue and vote, as if the next major decision wasn’t going to be voting her off the island. What business did she have planning for an Avengers future she wouldn’t even be welcome in? She was an ex-KGB, ex-brainwashed, ex-confidant of Nick Fury; everything about her was a big red X in the “Not Trustworthy” column. Tony had never trusted her, and after the Vodka Spectacle of the previous night, nobody else would believe that she was responsible.

And she’d worked and trained _so hard_ to be responsible, trustworthy, valuable; she’d believed that people could believe in her.

_Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong._

The wind was whistling escape plans in her ears when Steve spoke.

“Would you like to see?” His voice was soft and uncertain, and Natasha was far too curious. Steve was private in general, but absolutely nobody saw his artwork. Natasha understood privacy, and understood Steve, so she’d never even snooped; but denying herself this opportunity was beyond her.

(She hoped he wasn’t terrible. _God, wouldn’t that be embarrassing._ )

Steve scooted across the gravel roof until he was next to Natasha, knees bumping hers. He held the page open, and Natasha forced her hands not to tremble as she took the book.

Before she’d joined SHIELD, her file picture had been a blur of black violence and red hair. Once she’d defected, she’d sat for the database photo like a stone lion: no smile, no makeup, no movement. She sometimes thought of the Black Widow in that duality: all motion or all still.

The woman on the page was not the Black Widow.

Yes, it was the pleasant resting face she regularly used on marks. Yes, she had the right hair and bone structure. Yes, the stillness that she’d cultivated and perfected sat in her unmoving cheekbones and gently furrowed brow.

But this was someone else. Her eyes weren’t hard, but sad and staring far off. Her hair was tangled by the wind, and even through the facade she could see a smirk working its way out. It wasn’t the Black Widow, sleek and poisonous; it was Natasha, fierce and burdened.

“Is.” Oh god, was she going to cry? “Is this how you see me?”

Steve tried and failed to disguise his alarm. “Do you not like it?” He cautiously tipped the book away. “I know it’s not my best, your hair moves so much--”

“But this is what I look like to you?” She could hear her voice becoming insistent. _Natasha. Get it together._

Steve looked distinctly uncomfortable. He pulled the book away and shut it. “I know the last class I took was before the war,” he muttered, “But I don’t think I’m that bad--”

Natasha didn’t know why, as she’d never in her adult life done such a thing, but she found herself throwing her arms around Steve as tears leaked out of her eyes. The sketchbook slid forgotten to the rooftop as Steve, confused, put an awkward arm around her shoulder.

“Oh, _Steeb,_ ” she said with heavy congestion, explaining exactly nothing. Steve produced a handkerchief ( _gross, he still uses those?_ ) and she wiped her face before delicately handing it back. Steve silently tucked it back into his pocket ( _yuck_ ), regarding her with what she liked to call his patriotic frown.

“You’re not here to kick me off the team.” Natasha said in slow realization. She knew enough about art to know that he wouldn’t draw her like that if he hated her, if he thought she was a problem. She looked up at Steve under lowered brows. “Are you?”

“That wasn’t the plan, no,” Steve said testily. They watched each other, eyes wary, and Natasha fell back in time to the hours after they’d escaped the wreckage of the weapons bunker at Camp Lehigh. She and Steve had sat just like this before, perched on the edge of Sam’s guest bed like her world hadn’t been cracked wide open again. He’d said he trusted her, then.

“Why not? My secrets are the newest Wikipedia page,” Natasha argued, logical and bitter as she sniffled up the rest of her congestion. “I’m a de-brainwashed child assassin, and the almighty SHIELD trifecta evidently didn’t trust me enough to share their death-altering plans with me. The most logical course of action is for the Avengers to remove such a liability from the team.” She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, counting the birds on the wind and wishing that she wasn’t so logical. Fuck the Red Room for making her such a human disaster that she couldn’t safely argue, even to herself, that she’d be a permanent asset and ally to the Avengers, to the world.

“You’re the smartest person on this team, Stark included,” Steve said dryly. “You can think circles around me, _fight_ circles around me, and yet you’re sitting up here like this is the principal’s office and I’m about to expel you.” He huffed out an angry puff of air. “As if I had any right to remove you from a group _you_ helped collect, or even could.” He shook his head and watched the horizon.

“I’m dangerous,” Natasha replied reasonably. “Aside from whatever trigger words might still be buried in my subconscious, I think the Hulk may legitimately enjoy the scent of my fear, and now that Stark isn’t required by SHIELD to work with the ‘Russian Robot’” --she ignored Steve’s pained look as she moved her arms mechanically-- “I doubt he’s going to offer me room and board.”

“He asked me when we were moving in.”

Natasha didn’t believe that for a second. “You mean Pepper asked,” she corrected him.

“No, I mean Stark,” Steve shot back. “He wants the team together, which surprisingly enough, contains you. He also invited Sam, who is, of course, beside himself.” He paused, and they watched the clouds together for a moment. _Cirrus,_ her brain helpfully supplied as she watched the strands shapelessly drift across her field of vision. The silence stretched on until he turned to face her. “I’m not staying here unless you are,” he said evenly. “You’re the best friend I’ve got, and I’m certain that I’ll throw Tony out a window in a week if you’re not there to stop me.”

She wasn’t surprised that Steve considered her his best friend: the man had barely deviated from his daily errands of survival penance from the day he moved to DC until the day SHIELD fell, and the only non-agents he regularly spoke to were Sam and Peggy Carter, whom he thought Natasha didn’t know about. What _did_ surprise her was that he would place said friendship on even remotely the same level as protecting the Earth. Steve, who had lost his best friend in a European ravine, and then nosedived his own plane into ice rather than let Hydra win the war; Steve, who had fought his way through his resurrected best friend to stop INSIGHT from launching. How could her friendship mean more to him than being an Avenger? Unless--

 _Oh, no._ Did he think he was in love with her?

“Steve,” she groaned, shoving his shoulder. “You can’t go around quitting the Avengers because you’ve got a fucking crush on me.” As if he were her type, anyway.

“Excuse me?” Steve recoiled, face screwed up in horror. “No offense, Nat, you are terrific, but no. Really. No.”

“Well, you don’t have to be _that_ insistent.” Natasha blew out a loud sigh. “Look, it’s nice that you think of me as a friend; most people can’t get past the whole ‘murderous Russian assassin’ thing. But you can’t put friendship, or love, or sentiment over the safety of the entire Earth.” She looked at him imploringly. Surely he had to see that?

Steve responded by jutting his chin out, which she had learned meant “I will be mentally, and likely also physically, immovable on this subject.” Usually it came out when they argued about whether football or baseball was the better sport; today was the first time he was applying it directly to her.

“You’re in, or I’m out,” Steve said stubbornly, crossing his arms. He loomed over her as stood. “This is not putting you above the Earth’s safety; this is recognizing that this we need your help--that _I_ need your help--to protect the Earth, to make this team successful. I’m not trying to say that you’re an idiot to think that Fury and Coulson are the end-all, be-all authority on trust. On the other hand, I do happen to be Captain America, emblem of honesty and justice, and I trust you with my life.” He had on that cocky smile as he reached down a hand to pull her up, and Natasha knew that, in accepting it, she was also agreeing to stay.

Her brain told her to say no, to cut ties and move to Paris before the team realized she was an unreliable landmine and dumped her. She could build her own guild of thieves and assassins, come into the villainous succubus she’d been engineered to become.

But what she _wanted,_ really, was to make up with Clint, and play pranks on Tony, and do yoga with Bruce, and beat Steve viciously at Mario Kart. She wanted to learn how to wield an Asgardian sword, and she wanted to drink cosmopolitans with Pepper. She wanted to be an Avenger, even if her morals weren’t quite as clear-cut as Steve’s, and she wanted to clear her ledger.

And she wanted to be good.

And even though every breath she took whispered _fuck the Red Room_ like a mantra into her veins, she would always appreciate that now, she knew what a privilege it was to make a choice for herself.

So she took Steve’s offered hand, and let him pull her up, and they walked together out of the sun.

 

 


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's Part 2! I'm not quite done with Part 3 yet but I was so bummed out about parts of AOU that I decided the best way to feel better was to post this next part :) Hope you enjoy!

**SIX**

_I can’t believe I’m doing this,_ Steve though for about the hundredth time. It was move-in day, Avengers style, and he was hauling his final box of books up to the 78th floor of Stark Tower. Somehow, even though Steve had once sworn to himself that he’d never do this, he was willingly living in the same building as Tony Stark.

It had been three frenzied weeks since SHIELD-gate, as Stark had taken to calling it, three weeks of wild planning and fast packing. Tony and Pepper had planned since the Battle of New York to create a living space for the entire team, but they had still needed a few weeks to make those plans a reality. Meanwhile, Sam had to negotiate relocating his counseling job, Thor had to assist Jane in her repatriation, and Steve had to say goodbye to DC.

He’d gone through his daily routine one last time, running slower than usual through the peaceful DC morning. It was too easy to linger at the Smithsonian, watching children enthusiastically line up next to his pre-serum image, and imagining that any other jacket-and-hat wearing men were Bucky, here to find himself again. Sulky teenagers nodded along to their iPods as they read the stories that Steve not only knew by heart, but also had written into his veins. It was time, he knew, to let go. The exhibit would go down in a few weeks; he didn’t need to stand watch as they peeled down Bucky’s face or pushed the Commando’s uniforms from the show floor. They’d all moved forward, one way or another; it was time that Steve did, too.

Of course, saying goodbye to Peggy was a completely different animal. He told her about Phil, and about the Avengers reassembling. After all these years, after so long, he still felt his heart grow when she exclaimed, “Steve, that’s just wonderful!” She was the only person alive who he still wanted to make proud, the only person whose opinion he cared about.

Peggy had immediately understood that a re-formed Avengers team meant Steve moving away, meant fewer visits with more time in between, but she’d only taken his hand and said firmly, “You make sure to keep Howard’s idiot kid in line.” Steve had blinked back tears as he’d promised, because oh how he loved and missed her directness, her fire, her… _everything._ He’d allowed himself, as he did for a single minute almost every day, to rage at the unfairness, that he’d lost the love of his life once and, now, was losing her again, without even so much as one shared dance to look back on. Peggy drifted off to sleep and Steve poured her a glass of water, then resolutely shut the door behind him to stop himself from lingering and letting the _what ifs_ wrap around his brain.

Back in Stark Tower, Steve dropped the book he’d been holding back into its box. He liked the apartment Stark had provided and appreciated the obvious thought that had gone into it much more than he’d ever tell him. There was no food in the fridge yet, though, and Steve was, as always, hungry. He whistled on the way to the elevator and told himself that this trip to the communal kitchen was _not_ because he was looking for company.

Something was burning, and Steve could smell it from the lounge when the elevator doors opened. He set off at a jog, making only one wrong turn before finding the kitchen, where Tony and Clint were loudly arguing about aerodynamics. Something formerly edible and currently smoking lay forgotten on the stove. Deep in discussion, Clint only nodded, and Tony tossed a, “hey, Cap,” over his shoulder before turning the conversation to trick arrows.

“Is anyone going to grab this?” Steve asked, already moving to the stove and snatching the frying pan from the flame.

“Aw, my grilled cheese,” Clint moaned, pushing Tony out of the way. “Damn it, Stark, you distracted me.”

“Anything shiny distracts you,” Tony retorted. “And if you don’t want to be distracted, don’t come into my kitchen.” Steve could feel the squabble escalating and quickly positioned himself between his teammates.

“Clint and I are both here because there’s no food in our new apartments,” Steve explained. Tony winced.

“Shit. I knew I was forgetting something,” he said, slapping the counter. “We can put in an order with the grocery delivery service for tomorrow morning.”

“But I’m hungry right now,” Clint said in a voice that was close to a whine, just as Bruce wandered in and yawned, “Is there some kind of welcome dinner?”

“You already live here!” Tony yelled, reserves of patience already gone. He pinched the bridge of his nose while Bruce and Clint avidly compared just how hungry they were.

Steve had thought that living with the team would be just like the Army barracks, just with more Tony Stark flash. The difference, he now realized, was that there was no order in Stark Tower. Nobody besides Steve and Sam had military experience, Tony was neither a leader nor particularly in change, and the rest, while maybe capable of leading, were not overly fond of following. This lack of structure was going to cause problems, fast.

“How about about we order a pizza?” Steve loudly suggested, succeeding in making Bruce and Clint pause. “...Or 20,” he amended, belatedly remembering how much Thor could eat in one sitting.

“Star spangled man with a plan,” Tony cheered before starting to argue with JARVIS about which pizza place had the best tomato sauce. Steve sighed and wondered if it was too soon to throw Tony off the roof.

By the time the pizza was delivered by a very starstruck teenaged boy, Natasha, Sam, and Thor had been unearthed and they were all packed into Tony’s dining room. Steve couldn’t help but recall the news they’d received the last time they’d eaten there, and it seemed as if he wasn’t the only one: Thor’s eyes flicked to the doorway every few minutes, and Tony was doing a very bad job at concealing the fact that he was watching Natasha.

“What?” she finally snapped after catching his stare for the third time. “Aside from the fact that I can kill you from across this table, I don’t think Pepper will appreciate it when I tell her you’ve been staring at me for about twenty minutes.” she arched an accusing eyebrow.

Tony fidgeted. “Um, I’m not staring, just… pointedly looking?” he tried weakly. Steve was feeling charitable, so when Tony desperately caught his eye, he jumped in to save him.

“I think Stark is just worried about you,” Steve said. “You know how much he _cares_ about everyone on this team.” Just because he was saving Stark’s ass didn’t mean he wasn’t going to embarrass him.

“I do _not_ care about you,” Tony insisted. “Any of you.”

“Clearly not,” Natasha said dryly. She looked around the table for a moment before continuing, “And this is late, but I’m sorry that I was such a wreck that night. It won’t happen again.” Steve watched as she met each of their gazes in turn. He smiled when she looked at him. Natasha grinned back, her “we’re going to light some fires” grin she brought out before the craziest missions they’d done together, and the knot in Steve’s chest loosened for the first time since he’d moved in.

If Natasha was here and flashing that insane smile around, then it had to be okay, or at least it would be soon. New York was his home again, after so many years away, and Bucky could come hurtling around the corner any day now. _This is right,_ Steve reminded himself as he helped clear plates. _This is where I was always meant to be._

“Feel like home yet, Cap?” Tony later asked, coming to stand next to him at a window. Steve looked south towards the Brooklyn Bridge and pretended not to notice how desperately Tony wanted everyone to be comfortable.

Steve opened his mouth to lie, but when he said, “Y’know, Stark, it kind of does,” he realized it was the truth.

\---

She knew he was going to come find her eventually. She had just hoped that “eventually” would be some time other than her first night in the Tower.

Nobody had been interested in socializing after dinner; new to cohabitation, they’d all needed their space after a hectic day. Natasha had retreated to her new apartment to make tea and grapple with the fact that it was larger than any space she’d ever before called hers. Barracks, boltholes, broom-closets-turned-rooms, they’d all been dwarfed by Stark’s generosity. What was she supposed to do with two bedrooms and a study, a top range kitchen, the most luxurious home bathroom she’d ever seen? She was overwhelmed, and that was not easy to achieve.

There was a knock on the door just as the kettle began to whistle, and despite how much Natasha wanted it to be Steve, or Pepper--hell, even Maria--she knew it was Clint.

“Let him in, JARVIS,” she said with a sigh as she dug through a box for her tea tin. The door whooshed open and there stood Clint, wearing an old SHIELD issue t-shirt and clutching a carafe of coffee.

 _Expecting a long stay then?_ Natasha thought, knowing she was being uncharitable. Of course he was expecting a long stay: despite her previous conviction to make up with Clint, she had instead barely talked to him since the day Steve had convinced her to stay on the team, too embarrassed by how terribly she’d behaved. That had been three weeks earlier. So now he was annoyed, and had every right to be.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said without preamble as he strode into the apartment and pulled two mugs from the glass-fronted cabinet above the sink. He set one in front of her, crowding her space.

“Hello to you, too, Clinton,” Natasha sweetly said in return, ducking away to carefully pour hot water into her mug and add her tea infuser. Surreptitiously, she studied his frown, counting the wrinkles that pleated his forehead. Years working together had taught her that he had up to five wrinkles in any given frown, and their appearance directly correlated to how upset he was.

She counted four wrinkles. _Fuck._

“Cut the crap, Nat,” Clint snapped, involuntarily sighing as he sipped his coffee. “You waltz into Zagreb and yank me out of deep cover, fine, not the time to talk. Dump me here with Tony, Bruce, and zero information, whatever, you’re busy rounding up the DC Duo. But if you seriously think that I’m going to be okay with us not talking after you go on a vodka rampage and then go radio silent for three entire weeks, then--then--” He didn’t seem to know how to end his rant, so instead took a huge gulp of coffee and burned his tongue. “Ow.”

Natasha felt it patently unfair that she was somehow in the wrong for taking the time out of her busy schedule to rescue him. For all she knew, he could have stayed in that position for six more months, wasting time and energy. She expressed all of this to Clint, adding, “And I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to. And what exactly should I have done instead, Clint? Let you sit in your apartment, eat cheetos, and avoid medical attention for the _bullet hole_ in your shoulder?”

“Well you could have stayed!” Clint shouted, coffee sloshing around his cup as he waved his arms in frustration. “You could have told me what happened at SHIELD _before_ you took off, so I didn’t look like a moron in front of Stark. And my god, when she realized that I didn’t know anything besides that SHIELD was down, Pepper turned those pity eyes on me. Enough to make a grown man weep.” Calmer, he took another sip of coffee and watched her over the rim.

Natasha traced the edges of her own cup. What he was dancing around, what everyone always threw at her eventually, was that she was unfeeling, that she didn’t care. Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, whom the Red Room conditioned to feel nothing.

She knew, in her core, that she wasn’t the unfeeling mask she tended to project. She cared about her team, even Tony, in a depth that actually scared her. She was resentful of Maria, and pissed as hell at Phil and Nick, but still, she cared about them; she wouldn’t be so angry if she didn’t. There were more than a few others whose lives she’d somehow come to be actively interested in, like Pepper and Melinda. And then there was Clint, and while Natasha could lie to herself about a lot of things, she wore an arrow on her neck and she knew that meant something.

Suddenly Natasha was furiously, piercingly angry with him. Where was the Clint Barton who had been proud the first time she, freshly de-brainwashed and anxious to care like others did, had stiltedly asked how he was doing after a mission? Where was the Clint who had painstakingly taught her that caring for others was not always blatant, but was sometimes in a shared coffee hour or an invitation to watch _Star Wars?_ The Clint Barton who _made_ her care, crawled under her skin and over her walls, so that now she couldn’t _stop_ caring, now she cared more than she should? How was it that now, when she’d risked her personal safety to bring him home, to make sure that he was _safe,_ her attempts at caretaking were irrelevant? She didn’t want thanks--her debt to Clint Barton would never be paid--but Natalia Romanova of the Red Room would never have rescued her partner, and Natasha thought that fucking mattered.

“That’s bullshit, Clint,” she finally answered, cool and bitingly sarcastic as she blew on her tea. “If you wanted details so badly, you could have used the internet, it’s all there. I’m sure even noted technophobe Tony Stark at least has dial-up. And we talked eventually. Why the hell did you wait to hear it from me specifically?”

“Because you’re my partner!” Clint exploded. “Because you’re my friend, and because I care about what happens to you, and because I'm in _love_ \--fuck--” He broke off and shoved his coffee mug into his face so fast he nearly chipped his teeth.

_Oh._

Natasha could count on one hand the number of times she had ever felt like a deer in headlights, panic flooding all the circuitry in her brain and holding her hostage. The first time Bruce had transformed in front of her was on this short list; now she could add this aborted declaration of love.

She quietly, warily watched Clint, who was staring fixedly into the bottom of his coffee as if it held the secrets of the galaxy. She allowed herself a split second to wonder, for about the millionth time, what it would be like if she let him finish that sentence. She’d seen something in his eyes for years, even before New York changed everything, but she always stopped herself from going any further than _what would happen after that?_ He met her eyes for a brief second, as if he were contemplating the same thing, and she immediately looked down to study the swirls of her tea. Not that she had any frame of reference, but Natasha was pretty sure that this was how twelve-year-olds acted at school dances. Love was for children, indeed.

“This is dumb,” she announced loudly. She set her tea on the counter with a clatter and Clint looked up, startled. “Clint, you’ve been my partner and friend for, what, eight years now? You should know. When things get fucked up, I don’t always talk about it. Sometimes I can’t talk, even if I want to. Sometime you have to wait for me, and sometimes I just don’t want to; that’s still how I’m made.” She let her voice soften, hating that she was handling him and knowing that she had to. “I thought you knew me better than this.”

Clint looked chastised, but it was fleeting. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered, more to himself, before pointing an accusing finger. “You’re fucking _handling_ me, and I almost fell for it. God _damn_ it, Natasha!” he made a checked movement, as if he wanted to throw his coffee but then thought better of it. The fifth forehead wrinkle appeared, and Natasha thought, _this is it, I ruined it, our friendship is over._

She didn’t want it to end, especially not like this, not when she finally had everything she’d ever wanted within reach. Friends, a home, the chance to right some of her wrongs and the ability to choose her battles. But Clint was her oldest friend, her _best_ friend, and without him fighting next to her it just wouldn’t feel right. She tried to say she was sorry and please don’t go, but instead found herself taking one step towards him, and then another, and she didn’t know what she was going to do when she reached him, but his eyes were filled with angry terrified hope, and now she was close enough to smell the coffee on his breath, and her hand was was on his, and--

“Miss Romanoff, Captain Rogers is outside,” JARVIS politely announced.

Natasha wondered if the AI knew what he was interrupting; she sure as hell didn’t. She backed away from Clint in large steps and picked up her tea with hands that weren’t quite stable. Clint’s forehead, she noted, had de-wrinkled, and he was now just staring at her, bewildered. “Shall I let him in?” JARVIS pressed.

“Yeah, it’ll be a party,” Natasha snarked, after a moment of locking away whatever had just come over her. That was an topic she could explore later, or never.

Steve strode in wearing his uniform, thankfully not noticing the fizzling tension between the carefully spaced assassins. “Stark hasn’t configured an alert system yet, so I’m playing messenger. There’s a large squadron of gunmen holding a Broadway theater hostage, and the cops can’t get close. We think it’s AIM. Stark and I are going--you two in?”

Natasha glanced in Clint’s direction and found that he was already reaching for her mug as he dumped out his own. Clint nodded to her and she nodded back with a grin, glad that they were still in perfect accord despite the fact that they’d been actively yelling at each other about five minutes prior and nearly _whatevering_ thirty seconds ago. He grinned, too, because they were, after all, best friends; they knew each other better than they knew themselves, and a fight was exactly what they needed right then.

“We’ll be ready in 10,” Natasha answered, mind already leaping forward. “Meet in the lounge?”

“Make it 7,” Steve said with a curt nod before leaving, all business. In the silence that rang afterwards, Clint and Natasha were slow to move; it would only take them 5 minutes to be ready.

Clint stared at Natasha, a close, perceptive stare that made her fidgety. “What was about to happen there?” he asked cautiously, refusing to looking away.

Natasha wanted to lie, knew she could lie and he’d never know; but Clint was the sole person that she tried never to lie to. “I have absolutely no idea.” She looked away, because when it came to emotions and Clint, she was a coward and readily admitted it.

Somehow, though, this was enough, probably because of the more important city-saving to be done. Clint nodded and pushed off the counter for the door. “We _are_ going to talk about this later,” he said, deliberate on the are and with a promise in his glare that made her wince. Then he was gone.

When the met again 5 minutes later, they were the Black Widow and Hawkeye, consummate professionals dedicated to the mission briefing. And if one watched the other for a second more than seemed necessary, it was only because looking out for their partner was what each of them did best.

 

**SEVEN**

“Based on the yellow suits the goons are wearing, this looks like AIM,” Steve said as JARVIS brought up a map of the area. “It’s the Winter Theater, and no, we have no idea who or what they’re targeting. The police say that there are about 20 inside, with hostages, and another 50 outside. They have a four block radius perimeter, and… that’s all we know.” He sighed. It would have been nice to have more information, but this was all they could get without SHIELD.

“Lot of bodies,” Natasha said with a frown.

Steve nodded. “Stark, Sam, Thor, you’re our transportation. A jet would be nice, but what can we do? When we get there, Thor, Stark, and I will deal with the outside. Sam, you take Nat and Clint and see what you can find out about the hostage situation, defuse it if you can. Bruce is staying here to avoid damaging Broadway unless absolutely necessary. Everyone clear?”

It was weird, Steve thought as he dropped from the sky, to be so excited about a fight. Captain America was not supposed to enjoy a battle, only the justice said battle resulted in. Steve Rogers, though, was antsy after months of inactivity. Looking around, he could tell from the way the others held themselves that they too had some sort of reckless nervous energy bouncing around inside.

Later, in the midst of AIM goons, Steve wondered if that pent up wildness was why things were going so terribly. That, or maybe they were just out of practice.

“Stark, any update on-- _oof,_ ” he broke off as one of the AIM henchmen got in a lung-emptying whack to the stomach. Steve turned and lunged, striking first with his shield and then followed with his fist. The henchman fell, unconscious, and Steve repeated, “Stark, any update on the interior of the theater? Hawkeye, anything?” He spotted another goon trying to sneak up on Thor and charged, knocking the guy to the ground with his shield. Mjolnir released an electric pulse that brought five more agents crumpling to the ground before Thor turned to Steve with a grateful smile.

“Where do they keep coming from?” Thor wondered aloud. There was a temporary break in the wave of assailants, and Steve and Thor sagged into each other. “There must be at least a hundred men out here,” Thor continued, squinting into the night, “And yet we were told to expect half that. Should we suspect the police of lying to us, or possibly of being affiliated with Hydra?”

Steve sighed and wiped dirt from his forehead. “We  can’t be sure, but I have a feeling they just didn’t know. Their priority is to take care of the civilians inside.” He abruptly threw his shield in a wide arc, catching in the forehead two unsuccessfully sneaky AIM guys. “Any time, Stark,” he snapped.

“Yeah, yeah, unbunch your panties,” Tony snapped back, voice strained even through the electronic tone. “They’re having some problems inside.” Steve heard a blast reverberate through Tony’s microphone.

“Of course they are,” Steve grunted as he leapt to avoid another attacker. A lunge, feint left, and a solid right hook got the guy right in the face.

“Well, sorry,” Stark snapped. “It seems like there are more than 20 guys in there, and they’ve got a collection of hostages, plus some sort of biochemical agent that they’re threatening to release. Falcon can’t get all of them, even if I get in there to help; Widow can only take three at a time, and once Hawkeye lets a shot loose, their cover is blown.”

Steve tried to think over Thor roaring at the duo failing to land any blows on him. This was the worst part, when his shield was flying and his feet were airborne and he was being asked to think in the wide, to plan. He and Thor needed to get inside, but what were they going to do about the chemical agent? Another -- _another?_ \-- AIM trio came after him and he just barely got his shield up. _We’re not going to do it,_ Steve despaired, chopping forward with his shield, _our first go as our own team, and we’re going to be forced to retreat from a bunch of hazmat-suited buffoons._

In the end, they did win. Bruce, hearing Tony grow increasingly agitated over the comms, decided to wade into the fray outside the theater. With the Hulk engaging the mass of AIM bodies, Steve, Thor, and Tony were free to storm the theater and help Sam, Clint, and Nat overpower and disarm the terrorists.

Still, it had been a disaster of the mission, and Steve was glad that, under the cover of the night and the theater the majority of the actual fight had been missed by the media. The TV flashed snaps of their uniforms, but fortunately had no recording of Tony and Clint bickering the whole way home. They couldn’t have another mission like that. They needed someone outside the fight, someone who could coordinate their attacks, collect information, strategize.

And that was how Steve found himself sucking in a steadying breath before yanking open the door to Maria Hill’s 60th floor office. It was similar to Pepper’s, which Steve has visited once or twice, but without the warmth that Pepper’s photos and art brought to the glassy austerity.

“ _Ste_ \--Captain Rogers,” Maria stammered, jumping out of her chair before taking a deep breath. Having regained her poise, she said in her usual cool tone, “I can’t say that I was expecting to see any of you ever again, aside from the company Christmas party. Would you like to take a seat?” She gestured to the sleek chair across her desk as she reseated herself, smoothly sweeping whatever she’d been working on into an empty file.

Steve liked that she was so direct, had always liked that about her. It reminded him of the blunt sensibility of the 40s, of the war, _of Peg_ \-- He cut that thought right in half and uncomfortably situated himself in the offered chair.

Maria sensed his discomfort. “I’m sorry about the chair,” she said without looking particularly so. “Usually if someone is coming to meet me in my office, I’m threatening to fire them. The chair helps.” The merest ghost of a smile lifted a corner of her mouth. “Anyway. How can I help you, Captain?”

“Maria. We blew up three helicarriers together. You can call me Steve.” He tried out a smile, but her face didn’t budge, so he sighed and sank back as far as he could in the terrible chair. “Okay, here it goes. I’m the leader of the Avengers, and in that capacity, I’m here to ask you to join us.”

Maria started, lips parting in surprise. Steve waited, idly wondering if she wore lipstick and then wondering why he was wondering, until she said conversationally, “You know, Steve, Tony should have remembered that you’re a shitty liar when he put you up to this.” Nothing in her expression changed, but those icy blue eyes absolutely blasted him.

Unfairly, too. “Yeah, I know, which is why I usually stick to the truth.” He kep his tone mild as he continued, “And, come on, aside from the fact that I’d never agree, Stark wouldn’t do this, because when it turned out to be a joke, you wouldn’t so much as blink.”

Maria raised one slim eyebrow. “Are you accusing me of being cold, Rogers?” Her voice was measured, even, dry; completely devoid of emotion.

He was obviously meant to say yes. The majority of SHIELD had referred to her, unoriginally, as “The Ice Queen”; There were times when he could skate on the frozen blue of her eyes. But someone cold didn’t cry over Nick Fury, dead or not. Someone cold didn’t protest, “but _Steve,_ ” in a breaking voice over the sounds of dying helicarriers.

“Not cold,” Steve said with a miniscule smile, “just unwilling to give Stark everything he wants.”

“Perceptive,” Maria said, returning his small smile. “Alright, fine. I’ll admit that I’m intrigued. What need do the Avengers have for the passed over, former second-in-command of SHIELD?”

 _Hm._ So Maria wasn’t pleased with SHIELD’s new leadership, then. “Not a fan of Phil Coulson, I take it?”

“Phil Coulson is one of the best in the business.” Her eyes shuttered: _subject over._ Steve shrugged, curious but not enough of an idiot to try pressing the topic. _Another time,_ he told himself. _Maybe over coffee._

_What?_

“We were a mess last night,” Steve hastily confessed in the ensuing silence. “A horde of AIM agents took a Broadway theater by storm and we… barely succeeded. Total disaster. The media was just excited that we were out, but next time we’ll be in major PR trouble.”

“So use Stark’s PR department, god knows they can handle anything.”

“No, sorry, that wasn’t clear.” Steve screwed up his face in concentration. “I can’t call all the shots _and_ punch people at the same time. Tony’s in my ear pestering me and I can barely focus on the fight in front of me. We need someone on the outside, someone who can manage us and who knows all our strengths and  weaknesses.

“Stark’s got the tech, and a satellite hookup, and I think you’re the best tactician in the building.” He met her eyes and pushed every _please_ he had into the universe. “Best tactician in the city, in the country.” If she refused, he’d have to do it himself, and if he wasn’t on the ground during a fight, he might go crazy.

Maria’s eyes flickered with an unidentified emotion, and she sat quiet and still while Steve shifted in his uncomfortable chair. People at SHIELD had often painted Natasha and Maria with the same broad brush, but Steve could write an essay about the differences between their thinking faces alone. Natasha, if she knew you, would let you see the gears turn; Maria kept her cards tucked firmly to her chest.

“That’s quite the proposal, Rogers,” she said finally with a sigh, “but next time, bring a ring.”

Steve blinked. He’d forgotten that she had a sense of humor. Recovering, he patted his pockets. “Sorry, I left it in my uniform.” He grinned, and maybe that was what finally earned him a temporary look over the walls, because she flashed a startled grin at him. Anyone with eyes could see she was both lovely and commanding; but that smile was like a comet lighting up her face, and she was momentarily stunning.

 _Wow._ And then belatedly, _is she flirting with me?_

“I’ll let you know by tomorrow,” Maria finally promised, rising fluidly from her chair.

Steve practically leapt from his own. “Yeah, great. The sooner I know your answer, the sooner I can potentially give Tony a new reason to throw a tantrum.”

“Wouldn’t want to deny him that,” Maria said as she walked Steve to the door. Just as his hand reached the handle, her cool hand covered his wrist. “Steve?”

Steve looked down, and her eyes were as blue and dangerous as the Tesseract, and he had an inkling that he might be in trouble.

“Thank you,” she said in a soft, sincere voice that many would argue could never belong to Maria, the Ice Queen. “For even putting me on the list, after--”

“You _are_ the list,” Steve said firmly, cutting her off. His voice softened. “And if they’re not okay with it up front, they’ll come around. We’ve all had to follow orders that we didn’t necessarily like.” She was silent, and Steve nodded once before pushing open the door and leaving. He absently rubbed his wrist in the elevator, smiled faintly, and then spent an hour in the gym pretending he wasn’t waiting for the “I’m in” text that finally came.

\---

It wasn’t common knowledge, but after a mission went to hell, Natasha avoided being alone. When missions went well, she often needed to hole up and pull herself apart from her persona of the week; but when things were bad, there was nothing she wanted less than to dwell on all the things she could have done better. After the fiasco in Majorca, she’d been seen chatting up the lunch ladies in the SHIELD cafeteria, which she notoriously avoided. When she and Clint had gotten screwed six ways to Sunday in Aleppo, she’d spent the following week volunteering to spar with new recruits. So when the Broadway mission ended poorly, Natasha headed to the communal kitchen in search of distraction.

The room was empty save for Thor, who was peering skeptically at a tube of pre-made cookie dough. It was still vaguely hilarious to Natasha that a literal deity was walking around Manhattan with a man-bun and, today, Birkenstocks, but she kept that fact to herself. He looked up as she approached and asked, as shyly as a thunder god could, “Do you know how to bake these?”

Natasha walked over and took the package from him. “It looks pretty straightforward to me,” she said, scanning the instructions in puzzlement. “Break, bake, eat, right?”

“But where is the kneading, or the rolling, or the dough braiding?” Thor demanded. “What is this whole section of artificial flavors for? Midgard and Asgard have many things in common, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Natasha picked up the true line of conversation. “Feeling a little homesick, huh?” she asked with a small smile. “Cookies to remind you of home?” Thor looked faintly trapped, as if a warrior was not meant to miss his home. Natasha drummed her fingers against the counter and debated with herself. Stay and help, or deflect and leave?

 _You said you wanted to be on a team,_ she sternly reminded herself. _This is what teammates do. If you leave, you’re going to be alone with your thoughts._

She took a deep breath. “Nobody, I mean _nobody,_ knows this about me,” she said slowly, pulling her hair up into a bun that matched his, “but I absolutely love to bake.”

Thor’s quick smile was infectious. “I shall guard your secret with honor,” he said gravely, but his eyes twinkled. He followed her into the pantry and allowed her to load him down with flour, sugars, nuts, and more to carry back to the counter.

“What kind do you want to make?” Natasha asked, cycling through her mental cookbook. She didn’t keep paper copies of recipes, because if somebody (Clint) saw them in her kitchen, her secret would be out. “Chocolate chip, sugar, Mexican wedding cookies? Snickerdoodle, gingerbread..?” She trailed off as Thor visibly brightened.

“Gingerbread!” he seized upon, smiling fondly. “The others also sound good, but in Asgard the cooks made these--they were called _pepperkaker,_ ginger cookies, and I’d sneak down to the kitchens and eat them until my mother would find me and drag me out by my tunic.” His smile faded and he looked down.

Natasha laid a gentle hand on his arm. “I was sorry to hear about your mother,” she said softly. Thor looked up, eyes overly bright, and she frantically threw out the first thought her mind formed: “What kind of cookies did she like best? Maybe we could make them, after the _pepperkaker?_ ”

Thor looked at the ceiling in a collecting moment, then smiled at her. “They’re called _drommar,_ which means dreams. When we would have trouble sleeping, she’d let us have one because she swore they brought peaceful dreams.” Natasha asked more questions about Asgardian life and he talked as he walked her through the _pepperkaker_ recipe, which he had long ago memorized. Thor was much better at approximating measurements than she was, especially since Asgardians used a different system, and he on the whole seemed much more familiar with the working of a kitchen than any other prince than she’d ever met.

“Well, as you already know, I was down in the kitchens all the time,” he began when she asked, efficiently rolling out the dough at the same time. “And you can’t exactly throw the crown princes of Asgard into the dungeons when one of them is being--what is that great word you all keep using?--oh, when he’s being an _asshole._ ” Natasha, in the middle of cutting birds into the dough, looked up in surprise.

“Not that I’m saying you weren’t an asshole,” she said slowly, gently pulling shapes from the counter, “Because I read the file from New Mexico, and you totally were. I just never expected to actually hear you admit it. Plus,” she added with a smirk, “It’s weird to hear the word ‘asshole’ come flying out of your mouth. Soon you’ll be saying ‘dude’ and ‘whatever, bro.’”

Thor let out a booming laugh, and Natasha grinned. She liked big laughs because they were entirely honest and couldn’t be faked. “ _Whatever, bro,_ ” he tried, making the words sound positively Shakespearean, then shook his head with another laugh. “No, I can’t do it. But, yes, I was an asshole, so they’d put me to work in the kitchens and I became less useless after some time.”

“Just you?” Natasha asked, choosing her steps carefully in the minefield that was Thor’s family history. “What about Loki?” The name still tasted sour in her mouth, but she was trying to Be A Friend.

Thor paused for a moment, eyes closed as he remembered his brother, then relaxed. “No. Loki hated the kitchens. Mother would get him work in the stables, since he was fond of horses.” He looked up from the tray he was greasing with a mischievous twitch of his lips. “Overly fond. I’m sure you’ve heard the story.”

Natasha gasped and burst into laughter. If someone had told her that morning that a member of the Avengers was going to make a reference to Sleipnir, Lok’s bizarre eight-legged horse-child, she would have guessed Tony; he found the story hilarious, and Pepper was always preventing him from bringing it up. Never would she have expected Thor-- _Thor_ \--to make a dirty joke, especially about Loki.

She was still laughing a little when Clint, Sam, and Steve appeared in the doorway. Clint took in her flour covered arms and shirt, and asked incredulously, “Nat, are you _baking_?” He wiped sweat from his forehead. From the very sweaty looks of it, Clint and Sam had been sparring in the gym. Steve seemed to have come from somewhere else, as he wasn’t sweating, and just looked from her to Thor in amusement.

Natasha froze, laughter dying in her throat. There weren’t many things about her that were still secret--hell, even her bra size had been on SHIELD file--and from that small subset, this was one of the few remaining secrets that wasn’t deadly. She wanted to keep it private for as long as possible.

Thor turned from the oven, caught Natasha’s paralyzed expression, and started talking. “I had a craving for some Asgardian desserts,” he announced, “And Natasha was passing through at the exact right time. Her extra hands have saved me.”

It was a serviceable enough lie, and only Clint looked suspicious. He leaned forward to grab a bird-shaped cookie, signed, _I'm watching you, Romanoff,_ and left to take a shower. Sam followed him out, but Steve stayed, settling himself at the counter to watch them work in companionable silence.

“What would you think if I--” he finally began as Thor used his hands to form the dough for the _drommar_ cookies.

“Rebuilt the Statue of Liberty in your likeness? Acceptable, but I don’t know if the world is ready to see you in a dress.”

“ _Nat._ ”

“Walked down the street naked except for your shield? I think the citizenry would find that amenable,” Thor guessed. Natasha grinned and offered him a floury high five, which he accepted.

“You’re a bad influence,” Steve grumbled to Natasha. “No. What if I asked Maria--Agent Hill to lead a command center during missions for us.” He took a breath, having rushed through his sentence so as to not be interrupted, then added, “We don’t have a command center at present, but I think after last night we need one.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes at the way Steve’s voice jumped around Maria’s name, but she let him conclude that this response was based on her (now-diminished) anger with Maria. “It’s not the worst idea,” she said thoughtfully, shaping the dough into small balls as she turned the suggestion over in her head.

“Having eyes above the fray would be helpful,” Thor said, an analytical look on his face as he easily manipulated the dough in front of him. “Many of us can get high enough to see the entire battlefield, but none of us that can have enough training in the art of strategy. Lieutenant Hill has shown loyalty and honor in the past; I believe she will be as devoted to our cause as she was to SHIELD’s.”

“Well said,” Steve said with approval. “Do you think that everyone else will have a problem working, um, with her?”

Natasha noted that this time he avoided Maria’s name altogether. _Interesting._ “Stark will throw a fit,” she said immediately. “You can count on it. I think everyone else will be fine.” Thor nodded his agreement.

“Good,” Steve said decisively, “because she already said yes.” He stood suddenly, took a cookie, and left, ears slightly redder than usual. _Very interesting._

When they were alone again, Natasha turned to Thor. “Thank you for keeping my baking secret,” she said sincerely. She was supposed to know people, was supposed to read the human race like a book, and she had missed this; there were layers in him that she’d never even suspected. It always made her feel a little more human, though, to be surprised this way.

“It is always nice to have things for ourselves,” Thor said with a kind smile. He was quiet for a moment, likely thinking on whatever those private things were for him. _Baking,_ Natasha thought as she reflected on her own. _Ballet, romance novels and Lifetime Original--no, Clint knows about all of those._ She didn’t want to dwell too much on what it meant that she only had one secret from Clint, and that it wasn’t a particularly deadly one.

“In any case,” Thor said, lightly pressing almonds into the centers of the cookies, “If I don’t tell anyone, then I don’t have to share when you teach me how to make a Midgardian pie next week.” He grinned, once again the cocky and self-assured thunderer she had thought she knew, and Natasha realized that this was one of the best post-debacle days she’d ever had. She pushed the cookie sheets into the oven while Thor popped a _pepperkaker_ into his mouth and smiled with nostalgic satisfaction.

“Was I wrong in noticing the Captain blush when he spoke of Agent Hill?” Thor turned and asked, eyes brightly speculative. Natasha set the timer and leaned against the counter, one eyebrow raised. Thor liked to gossip? _Hell yeah._

“No you were _not,_ sir,” she said impishly, and then spent the afternoon reveling in the singular experience of eating cookies while gossiping with a thunder god.

**EIGHT**

Steve couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So you’re saying that you have no problem with Agent Hill becoming our communications officer?”

Tony raised a condescending eyebrow. “You sound confused, old man. Were the words I was using too big for you?”

Steve ignored the second half. “I _am_ confused,” he said honestly. “I thought this was going to be a warzone.”

“Well, she’s not the friendliest,” Bruce put in, “But she’s good at that kind of thing, and I definitely don’t want to be in charge of the comms again.” He fiddled with his glasses, apparently done.

Tony nodded his agreement and added, “She’s cold as ice and wasn’t upfront about” --he waved his hand to disguise the fact that he still couldn’t talk about Coulson-- “You know, but she’s loyal enough to keep secrets, and she told us eventually, and she’s sharp as hell.”

“Good shot, too,” Clint piped up without looking away from the Flappy Bird game on his phone. “Does a killer impression of Fury, it’s uncanny.”

Steve had real doubts about this statement, but only clapped his folder shut and said, “Okay, great, so, unless anyone else has something to add, we’re done for today.” He was still dumbfounded that the discussion had gone so easily. Tony had barely blinked.

“I do.” _Of course you do, Tony_. “Just because you’re the Star Spangled Man with a Plan doesn’t mean you get to make plans for the whole team without us. Bringing Hill in should have been a team decision.” Tony folded his arms as he finished speaking, but his usual latent hostility towards authority was absent in favor of something closer to disapproval.

Steve opened his mouth to snap something back, then looked around the table and found similar expressions on each team member’s face. Guilt wrapped its familiar arms around him and he sighed. Bringing Maria onto the team was a great idea, and he knew it, but he’d skirted the team’s approval the same way he’d dodged Colonel Phillips in the war. The only thing worse than screwing up as team captain was doing so and being chastised by Tony for it. _If he wasn’t such an obnoxious winner, this wouldn’t be so painful._

“I’m sorry. I should have asked you all before I went to Agent Hill. I thought it would be better to see if she’d even be willing before I ruffled everyone’s feathers with the suggestion. Like I said, I expected a fight. But I won’t do it again.” He paused and met Tony’s eyes before scanning the team around the glass-topped table. “We’re a team and when something is going to affect everyone, we should make the decision together.”

“Oh, it’s okay, Spangles,” Tony said with a wave of his hand, his smirk stretching into a more sincere smile after a threatening glare from Natasha. “We know you didn’t mean anything by it.” Steve nodded sharply, and when there were no other issues to discuss, dismissed everyone.

And that was it. On their next mission, in which a cranky river god emerged from the Connecticut River by Hartford, Maria used one of Stark Industries’ satellite feeds to run the communications from the tower. Steve didn’t have to do anything more than avoid the prongs of a giant trident as he tried to get close enough to land solid blows. Maria adroitly directed Tony and Sam to fly distraction routes, and before anyone knew it the god had submerged for good. They’d looked competent and professional, and Natasha hadn’t even gotten her hair wet.

The victory healed some of the wounds lingering from the Coulson fiasco. Now that Maria was definitely on their side, Steve noticed Pepper inviting her to a cocktail hour with her and Natasha, and overheard Clint trying to talk her into a “former SHIELD agent” movie night. It seemed as if Maria wasn’t going to need Steve’s help to integrate into the team, which was fine, as he was facing an unforeseen consequence of bringing her in: mission reports.

Maria wrote the most precisely detailed debriefs and reports Steve had ever seen; and that was saying something, because he’d seen the veritable novels that Natasha had submitted to SHIELD. In all likelihood, she’d learned from Maria, whose notes included details about atmospheric temperature, barometric pressure, and JARVIS readouts on what everyone had eaten in the 24 hours before the mission. Steve would have been a lot more impressed if he wasn’t the person who now had to read the file.

She’d come up to him outside a practice room at the gym, toting a bulging file folder under one arm. Engrossed in the fierce fluidity of Natasha’s movements as she taught Thor some Midgardian fighting styles, Steve jumped when he heard Maria speak his name from about a foot away.

“Got some time to review the river god mission report?” she asked with a faint smirk.

It was Friday and all Steve wanted was to read his biography of Stephen Hawking until Clint showed up to beat him at some video game or another, which was becoming a weekly habit. He had no interest in the report until Monday or maybe ever, but when he opened his mouth to say so, “Sure,” came out, followed by, “We can go up to my apartment, it’s closer than a conference room.” Maria had nodded and they’d small-talked to the elevator, and now Steve was leafing through a mission report as thick as a brick and wondering what had possessed him to agree to this.

He flipped through the individualized body temperature graphs as Maria paced his living room inspecting his shelves of biographies and historical accounts with approval before turning to the framed poster of the Cyclone at Coney Island that Tony had given him as a move-in gift. On a small table below the print lay the Kiev file Natasha had handed to Steve months before. In the past month, he’d been so engrossed with the reformation of the team that he’d had little time or energy to work on the case.

“Is this your file on Barnes?” Maria asked quietly, although she clearly knew the answer. Steve nodded, not wanting to look up in the event that today was the day Maria’s blue eyes were filled with pity he didn’t want. “Would you mind if I took a look?” Steve shrugged in agreement. He and Sam had been about to ask for her help, anyway, when they’d been summoned to New York. Maria brought the worn file to the couch next to him. The beaten pages looked even more decrepit next to the crisp lines of Maria’s report. He watched as she gingerly began to sift through the file’s contents, evidently recognizing that they were fragile.

They sat together in what Steve was surprised to define as comfortable silence, paging through their respective reports while the sun faded. Eventually Maria turned to him with a defined frown. “How have you been making any progress on this when it’s predominantly in Russian?”

Steve shuffled the papers in his hand. “Before we moved up here? Google and guessing, mostly. Natasha was in and out of the country, and we were avoiding calling in favors so we could keep a low profile. JARVIS can help us out here, but I’ve just been so busy…” He felt guilt well up in his heart and wondered if there would ever be a day when that tightness wasn’t pressing against his ribcage, trying to escape. He squared his shoulders against a wave of sorrow and said firmly, “It’s no excuse. I need to focus on finding him before Hydra does, or else we’ll _all_ going to be facing a lot more problems.”

“You mean _we_ need to focus on finding him,” Maria corrected him as she closed the folder in her hands. Steve looked up, startled, and Maria’s eyes were soft. “There’s no way you can do this alone, Steve, even with Sam. Let us--let the team help.”

Steve closed his own folder and stared at it until the file number was seared into his retinas. how the hell was he going to ask the team to join him on this ridiculously dangerous wild goose chase? This wasn’t in and out, this wasn’t one they could dump with the CIA and forget about; this was a person, this was his best friend, and Steve aimed to bring him home and make him whole again. He looked away from Maria with wordless despair, unable to form the words to tell her how irresponsible of him it would be to endanger the entire team for his own revenge.

“You may not have noticed, but this is a team of difficult pasts,” Maria said gently. “Every single one of us has lost someone important. It’s the kind of loss that lingers, and I’m telling you, Steve, if I had the chance, if Tony or Thor did, we’d go back, we’d save them. You have the opportunity, and aside from the fact that you could lead them all willingly into hell, not a single member of this team is going to refuse to help you save what they couldn’t.”

Steve turned back and found her smiling hesitantly, like she wasn’t used to the expression. Maybe the reason everyone found Maria so cold was that they didn’t give her the opportunity to be anything but. The frostiness that she usually carried like plate armor seemed to have been set aside for the moment, and beneath that armor was this tentative woman with warm eyes and a nervous smile that he didn’t know at all. He liked the Maria he knew just fine; he wanted to know this version, too, though, and he didn’t know how he’d be able to separate her from that frozen armor for more than a minute.

He wanted to take her hand in his. He wanted to crack open a couple of beers and listen to her life story, learn what exact turns the wheel of fate had taken to lead her to become Fury’s second in command at such a relatively young age. He wanted this encounter with Maria to stretch on indefinitely, and he wanted Clint to have forgotten about their weekly video game session.

“Ready to get your ass kicked, old man? We’re going to destroy--oh, hey, Hill.” Clint paused in the doorway and surveyed the scene at hand, almost certainly catching how Steve’s ears reddened. Sam bumped Clint forward, craning his neck to see around the archer.

Maria had her armor back up as if it had never gone and Steve watched the gates in her eyes clank shut. “I guess that’s my cue. It seems like you’ve got some other pressing matters to attend to,” she said conversationally, sliding Bucky’s folder under the mission report before unfolding from the couch. “Let me know if you have any questions.” She was nearly at the door when she turned back, eyes softening again for the single second. “And think about the other thing, okay?” She turned to Clint and Sam, reserved as always in her brief greeting, then was gone.

“ _Sooo,_ ” Clint said the minute she was gone, voice muffled as he dug in the fridge for beer. “That seemed pretty cozy for a mission debrief.” He tossed a beer to Sam as he came to the couch and collapsed on it. “Don’t you usually have those in a conference room?” His posture was casual, but Steve wasn’t fooled: Clint’s eyes were sharply watching him even as he popped the tab and slurped the foam from the beer.

“It was nothing,” Steve said dismissively, but Sam spoke up from his position in front of Steve’s growing rack of video games.

“That was not nothing,” Sam said as he pulled a game out. “‘Nothing’ is what the two of us got as she was leaving. Sitting here on your couch looking at you like that is not ‘nothing.’” Sam pushed the game disc into the console and tossed his companions controllers.

“Looking at me like what--never mind, I don't want to know. What are we playing this week?” Steve asked hastily. He was not ready for this level of male bonding. He could do the sports thing, he could handle the brotherly drinking scene; but he could barely let Nat talk to him about going on a date, and she knew him better than anyone else. _And,_ Steve argued to himself, _It’s just Maria. Agent Hill. We work together, sure, we might become friends. But that’s it. I don’t even know her favorite color. (But it’s probably blue. She wears a lot of blue.)_ “I thought men and women were finally allowed to be friends in the 21st century,” he said aloud, voice mild as his television was illuminated with the racetracks of whatever racing game they were playing this week.

Clint snorted. “Sure,” he drawled, “Of course you can. You and Nat are friends. You and Maria? Not friends.” He kicked his shoes off and propped his feet up onto Steve’s coffee table, narrowly avoiding the stack of files. Steve wanted to inform Clint in his most condescending voice that, actually, he _had_ kissed Natasha, _so there_ ; but obviously that had been about evading Hydra and not about their relationship and, also obviously, Natasha would murder him. Instead he focused on the video game, which seemed to be about destroying as many cars as possible, and hoped that the others would do the same.

“So then what’s the other thing she wanted you to think about?” Sam asked thirty seconds later as he rammed Clint’s car into a wall. He whooped and zoomed away before continuing, “Is it a date? Flowers, dinner, movie…” He trailed off as the game reclaimed his attention.

 _Now that’s just unfair._ Steve had only ever dealt with Maria in work or mission settings, and now Sam was shoving in thoughts of Maria in a dress and the two of them in the shadowed back row of a movie theater, or in an upscale Midtown restaurant, sharing a secluded corner booth and then dancing until--

 _You can’t dance, Steve,_ and that was the end of that for more than one reason. “It’s something to do with Bucky,” he ground out, knowing that the subject would completely distract the two men sprawled across his living room. He felt bad using Bucky to get out of the conversation; but then again, he was always feeling bad about something, and Buck’d always had a knack for getting Steve out of awkward situations.

Sure enough, Sam slammed the pause button (just as Steve had been about to catch up to him, of course) and focused entirely on Steve. “Do you have an update? Has SHIELD reached out?” Sam slid a wary look in Clint’s direction at the mention of his former employer, but Clint batted it away with a lazy wave as he watched Steve.

“No, nothing new,” Steve sighed, head in his hand. “Maria thinks I should bring the whole team in, but that’s just… not a good idea. Right?” He pushed his fingers against his closed eyes until sparks flew against his eyelids.

“Wait, you _weren’t_ going to bring us in?” Clint blurted, snapping out of his slouched position. “I thought that was the plan! I’ve been waiting and waiting for the briefing, thought maybe you were still collecting intel.”

“I am,” Steve insisted. Sam glared. “Sorry, _we_ are. But it’s dangerous enough with the two of us on the case. The entire team does not need to be distracted by my personal crusade.”

“Oh, bull _shit,_ ” Clint snapped, crossing his arms like a cranky toddler. “You’re not invincible, Rogers, or did you forget that you almost died on that helicarrier? Wilson here is great, but your pal Barnes took you both down before and he can do it again. You _need_ us. The Avengers are literally who you’re supposed to call when you need help, and if you think the team is going to turn you down then you need to get your head examined.”

It was probably the longest string of words Steve had ever heard the archer say at once. He looked at Clint, who shrugged defensively, then at Sam, whose raised brows made it clear that he agreed with Clint. “Alright, _fine,_ ” Steve groused. “We can start putting together a briefing.” He didn’t want to admit that saying the words aloud had set off a starburst of hope in the murky depths of guilt he carried; but as Clint turned the game back on he clapped him on the shoulder, and Steve was pretty sure that he knew exactly how he felt.

\---

It had seemed like a great idea at the time. Natasha had seen Bruce quietly moving through one pose after another and found herself suggesting that he lead the team through a hot yoga session. It was a great way to center oneself, would provide a break from the varied violent training methods everyone else employed, and Bruce would be bonding with the team instead of shying away as usual. It would be a good exercise for everyone, right?

And, okay. Everyone else _was_ having a good time. Bruce was truly in his element as he patiently instructed his small class on each pose before blasting the thermostat; Natasha didn’t think she’d ever seen him so entirely at ease. Thor, who approached all forms of Midgardian exercise and recreation with enthusiasm, leapt into each pose with the same fervor with which he leapt into a fight; next to him, Steve placed each hand or foot in his usual pragmatic way. To Natasha’s left, Pepper and Maria’s long legs and arms reached gracefully for opposite ends of the room, and in front of them, Tony and Sam “whispered” about the jet blueprints they’d been dragged away from.

Clint stood directly in front of Natasha, following Bruce’s instruction with limber agility if not grace. She was reminded of his acrobatic history as his back and shoulder muscles rippled and stretched under his bare skin, and was dismayed to find herself admiring his physique on more than an objectively assessing level.

 _This_ was why Natasha was not having a good time, regardless of how serenely she stood in her eagle pose. Looking at Clint was tugging at places she didn’t know she had, and here in Bruce’s yoga studio there was nowhere to run from her thoughts.

Natasha was not an introspective person. She hadn’t exactly had a soul in the Red Room, nor the time or mental ability to search it. Introspection was, now, a messy business that often dragged out the demons she had never completely made peace with. Just because she didn’t _express_ her feelings, though, just because she didn’t necessarily always trust herself to get the words right or the proper expression arranged on her face, didn’t meant she didn’t _have_ feelings. The life of a spy-slash-assassin-slash-Avenger didn’t afford much free time, and Natasha could think of many better uses of her time than sitting around parsing through _what_ she was feeling or _why_ she was feeling it. Her life was one high stakes scenario after another, and letting emotions rule her head was an entirely dangerous way to live.

As he turned into the next pose, Clint twisted so he could sign at her with a lazy grin, and she knew it was only “Ha, look how terrible Tony is at this,” but something in her chest still wobbled and she suspected it was her traitorous heart trying to get her to think about how she felt about Clint and why. How could she have a good time doing yoga if the crinkle of his eyes when he smiled or his calloused fingers on her shoulder were igniting small fires inside her, if they had been setting her aflame since that night in her kitchen when they’d almost _somethinged._ Natasha was a successful actor when necessary and Clint wasn’t half bad himself, so she had no idea if he too laid awake into the night, replaying those same three words-- _I’m in love_ \--over and over until they no longer seemed like words at all: _iminloveiminloveiminlove._

Some nights she wished he’d finished the sentence, that he’d added “with you” just so that it was all laid out neatly, and _that’s_ how she knew she was way out of her depth. “Love is for children,” she’d said as she’d played Loki with a harp player’s finesse, and in the necessity of the job she’d never clarified that what she meant was that love was only for those who had ever been children. After all, love meant unending and unshakeable trust, meant deep affection and passionate caring; when else did one learn about such things than as a child, perched upon a parent’s knee? Even neglected children like Tony and Clint had learned from the family butler or the circus that became a family. Even abandoned children learned from schoolmates or friends what love was meant to look like.

But Natasha had never been a child. She’d been a toddler, then a ballerina, a honey trap, an assassin. By the time she left the Red Room and the KGB, her chances at childhood were long gone. You had to have been a child to truly know love, Natasha firmly believed, and when she added the body count in her wake into consideration, well, she figured someone with a ledger as red as hers had no business knowing love, anyway. And she had always been content with that knowledge. After all the terrible things she’d done, she certainly deserved much less than the friends and teammates that she had and the privilege of trying to protect the world. _If I have all this, if I have freedom and trust and agency and friends,_ she reminded herself as Bruce led them through the warm-down, _then I can be content without love. I_ will _be content without love._

Clint came up to her after yoga with a smile and those goddamn muscles rolling as he pulled his shirt back on. His eyes glinted as Bruce un-dimmed the lights, the blue and grey shining so much like they had when she’d lowered her gun and taken his hand on a dark Yekaterinburg roof years and years before. He’d told her then that she’d love being a SHIELD agent, and she’d scoffed, because one thing Natalia Alianovna Romanova absolutely could not and would never do is love anything.

 _I smell terrible, but I’ve got a great prank to play on Sam,_ Clint signed with a sly mischievous grin in his victim’s direction. _Come up and you can drink some of my good vodka while I tell you about it._

Looking up into Clint’s expectant face, Natasha realized that Natalia was really gone once and for all, because Natalia would never _entertain_ the thought of loving a goldfish, let alone a person; meanwhile she was standing under Clint’s gaze and discovering that she’d been hurtling towards this and suddenly the ground was coming up hard and fast. “Sorry, there’s some stuff for Steve I’ve got to do,” she replied, mouth suddenly dry as she turned to roll up her yoga mat. “Tell me tonight, thought? After dinner?” Clint shrugged and easily agreed, and they left Bruce’s yoga studio chatting as usual.

But by dinner, Natasha had managed to maneuver herself into a recon mission with Sam in Nairobi, which bled into a Roxxon infiltration, which merged with a honey trap mission, until Natasha had spent nearly an entire month working back-to-back assignments, and was too exhausted at night to think about anything other than sleep.

“You look like shit,” Maria bluntly informed her as she slid on to the next barstool at their weekly cocktail night with Pepper. “Like, worse than that time I extracted your team from the Mongolian steppes.”

“Fuck the Mongolian steppes,” Natasha said into her glass as she drained it. “I’ve still got a scar where one of those demon horses bit me.” She slid off her stool with a wince to move around the bar and pour a new drink. She’d most recently been in Dar es Salaam with Sam investigating a Hydra cell, but had nothing to show for it but a couple of bruised ribs. She’d had worse injuries over the years, but Maria’s eyes were still studying her as she measured out her vodka. “You can point that worried handler look somewhere else, Hill,” Natasha said without looking up. “I’m pretty sure I’m not under your supervision anymore.”

“You’re not,” Maria agreed with a shrug as she accepted the frosty martini glass Natasha offered her. Regardless, the pointedly concerned face remained firmly in place until she sipped the wallbanger that was more vodka than orange juice and grimaced. “Ugh, you Russians and your vodka. Give me scotch.”

Natasha poured Maria’s tawny drink into one of Tony’s square lowball glasses as Pepper stalked into the lounge, shouting into her phone in French. She paused long enough to grab Natasha’s drink, down it in two shuddering gulps, and sigh appreciatively before exiting to the kitchen with a very sharp _“non!”_ into her phone.

“And here I thought _I’d_ been having a shitty day,” Maria remarked as she swirled her scotch. She started in on this week’s difficulties in safeguarding Stark Industries and its frustratingly anti-bodyguard namesake. Natasha remade her drink, adding even more vodka just to spite Maria, and settled back onto her stool to listen to Maria complain about Tony, Tony’s R &D minions, and whoever else that’d crossed her that day. Maria had only been coming to what had been Natasha and Pepper’s weekly ladies night for a couple of weeks, and Natasha was surprised to find herself enjoying the company of her former SHIELD superior.

 _We never used to talk like this,_ she thought, observing the animation of Maria’s face as she described the doodles on Sam’s report from Dar es Salaam. _We never used to talk at all. Ranks were completely closed at SHIELD, and compared to the way she ran things there, she’s a completely open book now._ Not that Maria was now some sort of effusive gossip, no: everything deep and personal was still leagues below her surface. But her eyes brightened when she smiled, to the point where she was totally different woman, and Natasha had never known because she’d never seen her smile before.

She ran her fingers around the rim of her glass when Maria turned the subject to the search for Bucky, in which she and “Steve, I mean, Cap,” had just found new information. _“Steve,” huh?_ Natasha mused. _Since when do you, the queen of protocol, call him Steve?_ Intrigued, Natasha nudged the conversation towards him again and marveled at how open Maria’s usually closed face was. Forget microexpressions: Natasha could read Maria’s emotions in her eyes, her face, her voice. She was stunned at how obvious it was.

“Sorry, what’d I miss?” Pepper, finally finished with her call, slid onto the third stool with a glass of red wine in one hand and the bottle in the other.

“Maria’s in love with Steve,” Natasha said (blurted). She wasn’t sure if she’d disguised the wonder in her voice, but Pepper’s eyes had already snapped to Maria.

“You _are?_ ”

“No!” Maria denied, a tremor of panic in her usually cool voice. “We’re friends, and sure I’ve been hanging out with him a bit more lately, but no. I’m not--that.” Her hands were tight on her glass of scotch even as she looked up with a face carefully wiped of emotion. _That’s always the tell, Maria,_ Natasha thought. _The emotionless face. Real people never feel absolutely nothing._ She let Maria sweat for a few more seconds before turning to Pepper with a satisfied raise of her eyebrows.

“No of course she’s not,” Natasha deadpanned. “I have no idea what I was thinking.”

Pepper laughed in that gracious way that Natasha had tried so hard to master when they worked together. “Well, I can’t say I’d blame you if you _were_ in love with him,” she said gently, in the magnanimous tone that had paved many the way to many successful business deals. “I mean, who could resist those arms, right?” She paused, took in the way Maria was gulping her scotch, and then smoothly transitioned, “Speaking of arms: my god, you would not believe how much the government of Vanuatu wants to pay Stark Industries to take up arms manufacturing again…”

 _She’s a master,_ Natasha thought with admiration as Pepper deftly balanced out the conversation until Maria seemed to have unclenched her hands from her glass (though that may have had more to do with the four extra fingers of Tony’s best, most expensive scotch). They avoided the topic of Phil entirely, but let conversation leap from Stark Industries’ newest projects to New York politics to the fact that Maria apparently didn’t own a single item of designer clothing.

“Not even shoes?” Pepper gasped, loose and giggly as she always got halfway through a bottle of wine. “Even Nat’s got some Louboutins; or were those just part of Natalie’s wardrobe?” Natasha liked Pepper and it was partially because she’d been entirely unfazed and non-judgemental about her entire infiltration and HR charade.

“Please,” she snorted into her fourth--fifth?--wallbanger, which by now was basically orange-tinged vodka. “Like SHIELD would have forked out for those. My collection of super sexy shoes is all from my hard-earned paycheck.” She leaned back on her stool, tipping it onto one leg and idly watching Maria’s face move through interest, envy, curiosity, shyness. _Is it the alcohol that makes her this easy to read? Or just the company?_ “You can come by, try some on, if you want,” Natasha offered, foreseeing the request the other woman didn’t know how to ask. “Maybe next week you can borrow some and we can get dressed up and go out for drinks instead of meeting here.”

“I--that is, well--sure,” Maria finally worked out, face just as pink from shyness as from the scotch. _Maria Hill is shy?_ “If it won’t be an inconvenience, and if Barton doesn’t mind vacating your couch.”

Natasha shrugged. “It’s no problem. Clint’s not there that often--” and then she broke off as Maria and Pepper rolled each other giant _yeah, right_ looks that were so loud that Natasha felt the need to protest as they started to laugh, “He’s _not,_ we had a fight or something, and it’s fine now, but I’ve been gone this month, anyway.”

 _You’ve said too much,_ she immediately chastised herself as Pepper rolled out an inquisition’s worth of questions and Maria stared over the rim of her glass. _This is why you’ve never had girlfriends, this is why the Red Room kept you separated; you get together, have a few drinks and enjoy the company of others, and suddenly you’re tossing out secrets like candy._

But goddamn it, Natasha _liked_ Maria and Pepper, and even if she didn’t like her own emotions, she liked to hear about theirs, and their days, and their opinions. And this wasn’t the Red Room, where friendship was discouraged and, besides, would just get you killed; this wasn’t SHIELD, where one conversation about shoes or makeup between two women meant a month of teasing from your mostly male team. This was Avengers Tower, this was a Fortune 500 CEO and the former deputy director of the Earth’s most powerful intelligence agency, and they wanted to be her friend, _hers._ These were women who were actually interested in her and her life, and without any agenda; and she was tired, so fucking tired, of holding so many people at arm’s length for so long. If she didn’t drop her arms and let people in--Maria, Pepper, the team, _Clint?_ \--were they going to leave? Rationally, logically, what reason did they have to hurt her?

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” Natasha said with honesty that felt heavy and foreign on her tongue, “Not today, at least. But you really should come try on some of my shoes, and we really should go out next week. Tribeca, maybe.” And maybe it was because for once she’d just been honest instead of deflecting the conversation away or just outright lying, but the interrogation ended without so much as a second glance.

“I will,” Maria said, meeting her eyes and giving her a tiny, grateful smile. “And thanks.”

“Anything for a friend,” Natasha said with a smile of her own, and then turned the conversation to Sam and Clint’s new bird alliance before what felt suspiciously like tears could make their way onto her face.

 

**NINE**

Steve placed the last folder at Tony’s seat at the foot of the conference table. Months of research and recon had gone by and now, finally, the entire team was coming in to help find Bucky.

Well, really, he was _letting_ the team in. Either way, every single note he, Sam, and Maria had compiled on Hydra and the Winter Soldier project was collected, catalogued, and organized in the briefing packets that lined the long glass table.

 _This is it,_ Steve told himself as he paced the length of the empty wood-panelled room. _If we can’t find him as a team then he’s going to be a Hydra asset for good._ The hope of recovering Bucky was one he’d been fighting to keep at bay even as he’d worked day in and day out to uncover new information; now that the hope was this much closer to fruition, it was all he could do to keep it contained.

“You’re going to wear out Stark’s fancy carpet.” Steve turned and found Maria leaning against the briefing room’s wide metal door frame, arms crossed and a kind smile just pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Although, if that’s your goal, carry on.”

Steve hung his head as Maria came closer and let a small self-deprecating grin cross his face. “I’m nervous,” he admitted with a shake of his head. “I know they all want to help, and I’m grateful that they’re willing to risk their lives; but what if the team is everything that I have to throw into this search, and we still don’t find him? What if--” He broke off and turned to stare down at the traffic bustling around Grand Central, swallowing the lump in his throat before continuing, “What if this is the war all over again, and I give up everything--my friends, my _life_ \--and Hydra still wins?”

“That won’t happen.” Maria’s voice had the unbreakable edge of a steel blade. “We’ve done all this work, run missions to every corner of the globe, and it’s all going to pay off.” She ducked her head until she found his gaze and held it until he released a small sigh. “We’re going to find him, Steve,” she said, confidence warming her voice. “I don’t believe in much, but I do believe in you.”

When she was this close, radiant in the morning sun, Steve could smell the subtle citrus of her shampoo, could count the nearly-invisible freckles on her nose. They’d spent more and more time together since she’d joined the team a couple of months before, and he kept discovering a warm feeling in his chest that he’d not experienced since he’d gone into the ice. It would rise up when she’d handily beat him at Scrabble with a magnificent unchecked grin, or when she patiently explained the popularity of US hockey and her devotion to the atrocious Chicago Blackhawks, or even sometimes when he’d catch her zoning out during a briefing, eyes misty and luminously far away. These few months had brought them through late-into-the-night meetings and early mornings in the gym (the time, they agreed, that Natasha was least likely to show up and insist on sparring) and now Steve counted Maria amongst his closest friends.

But sometimes he longed to put his hand over hers when she smiled at him, or to tug her into his arms when she hovered in his entryway for just two extra seconds before leaving. In Bruce’s yoga class, he’d asked the team to imagine an invisible string that pulled their bodies forward like arrows into the sun, and standing there with Maria, Steve could feel that string hauling his heart to her: to her eyes that weren’t blue ice but blue flames, to the smile that was the best guarded secret on Earth, to the determination that she wielded just like Peggy had--

 _No._ “Thanks,” Steve sighed, stepping away to drop into his chair as he heard Natasha’s telltale heels clicking down the hall towards them. Maria tilted her head as he moved away, but Natasha stepped into the room with a suspicious squint and Steve could see Maria push herself back into a strictly professional frame of mind by the time she was face to face with the assassin. Steve tried to overhear their hushed conversation, which involved a lot of Natasha glancing at him significantly, but Clint and Sam came bowling in and before he knew it, the spotlight was focused squarely on him.

_Can they see my hands shaking? Can they hear the tremor in my voice? Do they realize that this means more to me than anything else; more than freedom, more than my own life and maybe more than theirs?_

Steve looked down the table as he steadied his breath. Natasha wore her usual mission briefing serious face, but she gave him a soft smile so quick she almost missed it. It was sobering--calming, even--to see that Sam, Clint, even Tony, had put aside their usual jokes and were waiting with serious intent and concern written across their faces. He looked down at Maria’s small but reassuring smile and something clicked into place in his chest.

“Thanks for coming, everyone. This project means--well, it means a lot to me, and I appreciate you all sticking your necks out for me. You can still back out at any time, no questions.” He didn’t really expect anyone to hop up and leave, but when nobody even twitched, Steve could practically feel his heart expand with love. “So, let’s get started.”

It took nearly two hours for Steve to spell out who exactly the Winter Soldier was, both to him and to Hydra, why they wanted to pick him up, and where they thought he might be. The map on the Stark Screen that dominated one wall updated as Sam and Steve detailed the missions they’d conducted up and down the East coast and across the globe. Each deserted Hydra based they discovered was marked with a red star, dotting up and down the Atlantic like splotches of blood. New York City was conspicuously devoid of stars, as Steve and Sam had hoped that they were narrowing the net so that they’d corner the Winter Soldier in Brooklyn, somewhere they hoped he was finding familiar despite the advances of the future.

“This mission is not meant to have _any_ casualties,” Steve stressed, knuckles white as he gripped the back of his chair. “We want to take the Winter Soldier alive. I don’t want _any_ of you to get seriously injured. He’s shot Nat twice now; he ripped the wings off Sam’s suit and he nearly killed me. He shows no mercy if you’re standing in the way of what he wants. Weapons should be set to stun or tranquilize, but if he engages, _get out._ I mean it.”

“If he’s that dangerous,” Thor put forth seriously, "What exactly will we be doing with your friend once we’ve captured him? It does not seem as though you intend to imprison him.” The rest of the table looked at Steve expectantly as he gathered a huge breath.

“SHIELD, in its current formation, has a small pool of scientists that are willing to help deprogram and rehabilitate him.” A rumble rolled up and down the table, and Tony looked furious. Steve steamrolled over the angry rising conversation with, “None of you would be required to be involved in that part. I’m still the official SHIELD liaison, and you don’t ever have to cross the Director’s path, I swear, _I swear._ If there wasn’t a history of SHIELD successfully de-brainwashing people, I wouldn’t have even considered it.”

“Oh yeah?” Bruce snorted with heavy skepticism. “Who?”

“Me,” Natasha said smoothly, rising from her chair in the somewhat shocked silence of her confession. “When Barton brought me in I was a mess of fraying KGB and Red Room programming. That’s all in my file, which _obviously_ none of you read. What’s not noted there is that Barnes and I trained together for some amount of time while I was there. He has some of the same protocols that I had. I joined SHIELD because they could undo my brainwashing, and it worked. They’re the only ones who can help Barnes now.”

Steve stared at Natasha, as surprised as he was grateful. He hadn’t known that she’d known Bucky. He hadn’t known that she’d come to SHIELD for help as well as amnesty. Looking around the table, only Clint and Maria looked unsurprised; but then, Clint knew everything about Natasha and Maria knew everything about SHIELD. The others turned this new info over, shooting glances at each other, at the screen, at Natasha standing defiantly next to Steve in a show of solidarity that made him want to hug her for a very long time even if she insisted that hugs were lame.

“Fine,” Tony finally sighed, apparently speaking for the group. “As long as we don’t have to deal with SHIELD in any capacity unless we specifically want to.”

Steve could have kissed them all. He let out the giant breath he’d been holding, the one he just might have been holding since that day when the helicarriers collided and he’d stopped fighting. He’d tried to do it alone, just him and Sam against Hydra and the world, but Maria had been right: he needed the team. It was impossible to stop himself from grinning at her in gratitude, in happiness, as he sank into his seat to plan out the team’s strategy to systematically track Bucky through the Brooklyn docks he’d once called home.

There had been a rash of break-ins in Brooklyn over the past few months, at addresses that made Steve heart skip beats: the deli that once had been owned by Mr. Krantz, who’d always shaved Steve a few extra slices of ham (“for your Ma, Stevie, she needs it now that it’s getting cold again”), the Duane Reade that had once been the soda shop where Bucky and his girl of the week had lingered until the lights shut off. Each incident had the same MO: forced lock on the back door, security cameras disabled, money and safe ignored but evidence of food, water, or first aid supplies being taken. It was a straw, an unlikely coincidence, but Steve was grasping at it desperately, hoping that the break-ins were Bucky haunting the now unfamiliar Brooklyn streets.

And so they set up a select police task force, bolstered by two Avengers at all times, to monitor all of Steve and Bucky’s old haunts overnight. By day the team combed through homeless shelters and veteran support agencies, or prowled the streets looking for men on street corners with overgrown brown hair and significantly left-weighted gaits. He slipped through their fingers, moving too quickly or getting too volatile over the six initial weeks of the manhunt.

It all made Steve restless, to be _this_ close to finding Bucky, to know in his bones that his best friend was just across the East River, probably cold and hungry as October prepared to roll into November. It was Halloween, and Steve had wanted to be in Brooklyn with the task force, peering under hats and hoods for that flash of vacant blue eyes; but Bruce had threatened to hulk out if he had to attend the Stark Industries masquerade Pepper was throwing, and Tony had threatened to cover Steve’s shield in cat stickers if he skipped the party. So Bruce and Thor were in Brooklyn and Steve was stuck fighting with the bowtie that had accompanied the monkey suit Tony was forcing him to wear.

“You know, that bowtie never did anything to you,” Sam remarked as he watched Steve jerk the tie around in frustration.

“I hate bowties!” Steve fumed, crumpling the fabric in his hands. “And I hate these stupid galas. I need to be _out_ there, looking for Bucky, not glad-handing senators and--and _eating shrimp puffs!_ ” He threw the tie across the room before deflating, shoulders sagging and head bowed against the wall. “Sorry.”

Sam silently pulled a new bowtie from the pocket of his tuxedo and held it out to Steve. His voice was gentle when he spoke. “You’re going to wear yourself out if you keep this up. I _know_ , you want to be there, we all know you want to be the one who finds him; but on a team you’ve gotta trust each other, you’ve gotta trust that the task force will do their jobs right even when you’re not there.” He set a hand on Steve’s shoulder and raised a _you know I’m right_ eyebrow. “When the time comes, you’re going to _have_ to be ready to lead us all through his recovery and through dealing with SHIELD’s red tape. You won’t be able to do that if you don’t let off some steam.”

Steve heaved a huge sigh and took the tie from Sam’s hand with an apologetic smile. “I still hate bowties,” he grumbled reproachfully.

Sam laughed. “Man, give it an hour and you can take it off. Come on,” he cajoled as they left his apartment, “It’ll be fun. Have a few drinks, eat an entire tray of hors d'oeuvres, dance with Maria--”

“Why would I dance with Maria?” Steve asked as they entered the elevator and pressed the button for the corporate floor where the masquerade was being held. He could feel a blush forming on his ears and spilling down under his suddenly too-tight collar.

“Why would you dance with--man, are you kidding?” Sam sputtered. Steve looked defiantly back at him, pretending his face wasn’t the color of a fire engine. Sam laughed in disbelief. “You’re serious. You’re going to stand here in this elevator with a bright pink face and ask me ‘why would I dance with Maria, Sam’ like y’all aren’t all--all _whatever_ you’re up to,” he finished, folding his arms.

“I don’t sound anything like that,” Steve said mildly, refusing to recognize that the idea of dancing with Maria was incredibly tempting, or that he’d let himself daydream about what she’d be wearing tonight far more often than he cared to admit. “And I don’t know how to dance, so I’m not dancing with Maria or anyone else.” He stared determinedly at the numbers blinking as the elevator descended.

“Hey, okay, if that’s how you wanna play it,” Sam said with a blasé shrug. “I’m just saying, the way she looks at you, I think she’d teach you how to do any kind of dance you wanted.” The elevator doors chose then to open and Steve fled into the ballroom before Sam could make any “horizontal mambo” jokes or he’d have to explain why he was never going to learn how to dance.

 _Right, masquerade,_ Steve thought as he made a beeline for where Clint lounged against a red-and-gold bedecked bar along one side of the red-and-gold bedecked ballroom that occupied an entire floor of Stark Tower. He pulled the plain black mask Tony had provided out of his pocket and snapped it across his face.

Clint saluted him with the glass of whiskey he held in one hand. “Steve,” he said, taking a sip of his drink before fumbling in his pocket for his own mask. “Shit, thanks for reminding me.” Identical (if slightly more rumpled) black mask in place, Clint began to fill Steve in on the various partygoers that milled around under the Waterford chandeliers, clearly waiting for Pepper and Tony to arrive and start the festivities. Sam had caught up, and Clint was in the middle of describing the New York congresswoman who was already three sheets to the wind, when he suddenly broke off and nearly dropped his glass. In tandem, Steve and Sam turned in the direction Clint was still gaping.

Even with a jeweled mask held to her face, it was obvious that the woman parting the gawking crowd was Natasha. Her curly hair had been softened to waves that were pinned up behind one ear, and her dress was a deep emerald that shone and clung in all the right places. She had put an extra sway into her walk, as she did whenever she was in a room full of people staring at her, and next to Steve, Clint was gulping down his remaining whiskey and shoving the glass across the bar for a refill.

“Gentlemen,” Natasha greeted them with the smirk of someone who knows they look fantastic and isn’t going to waste time denying it. “Sorry we’re a bit late.”

Steve looked around. “We?” he asked, if for no other reason that to give Clint a chance to un-swallow his tongue.

Natasha turned with a slight frown, her dramatically long diamond earrings sweeping her bare shoulders. She crossed her arms, sheathed in matching emerald shoulder gloves, and scanned the crowd. “She was just behind me… Oh, there.” One gloved hand pointed across the crowd to a dark-haired woman who leaned into a conversation with an R&D engineer. She looked up, as if she’d felt Natasha gesturing, and Steve felt as if he’d been hit by a train.

It was Maria. Her shoulder-length hair was curled and coiled away from her neck so as to better showcase the cluster of pearls and diamonds that hung from her ears. She wore a red dress, strapless and ruby and draping exquisitely against her slender frame. She tugged irritably at her red elbow gloves as she made her way over to them. Steve felt something cool pressed into his palm and looked down to find a shot of the same stuff Clint had been drinking. “You look like you need that,” Clint muttered, and Steve wanted to deny it, but she was nearly to them and his insides were in knots. He threw his head back to swallow the drink and even though he couldn’t get drunk, the warmth that slid down to his stomach was still a comfort.

“I hate opera gloves,” Maria said in lieu of a greeting. She brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “Last time I wore them, I was 13 and at some ridiculous debutante ball.” Steve wondered if she realized that she’d just revealed something about her childhood, a subject which was taboo even in the times when their late night mission reviews had tilted over into deeper conversations.

Natasha reached over to slap Maria’s hand away from the top of her gloves. “Stop pulling on them,” she ordered. “You’re going to stretch them out.”

Maria rolled her eyes at Steve. “Let the woman pick out your dress and all of a sudden she thinks she can boss you around.” She smiled, but it was crooked, nervous, unsure in a way Steve had never seen in public. It made sense, though, that Maria wasn’t in something blue and vaguely Grecian as he’d expected. Natasha would choose red for Maria, because Natasha read people so well, and she seemed to know that the real Maria was about as icy as Tony was well-behaved.

 _She’s so beautiful,_ Steve thought. The word felt inadequate. _Beautiful_ barely scratched the surface, and he dug through his mental dictionary for something better, more apt: _phenomenal, resplendent, elegant, oh shit, I haven’t said anything yet, I’m an idiot_ \--

“You look great,” Steve said, wincing at how unbelievably lame he sounded. He heard Sam snort and kicked in his general direction. “Red is, um, is a really nice color on you.” _Smooth, Rogers, real smooth._

Maria opened her mouth to respond, eyes sparkling behind her silver mask, but a drumroll and fanfare from the band cut her off. They turned to watch Tony and Pepper enter, Tony using his Iron Man helmet as his mask because he was still a total diva and Pepper glittering in sleek white and silver. After a welcome toast and some introductory remarks that dragged all present Avengers away from the bar and onto the stage, the dance floor was open. Sam wandered off to find a dance partner, giving Steve a pointed stare and shoulder nudge towards Maria as he did so. Clint placed Natasha’s hand on his arm and led her onto the dance floor with surprisingly little complaint from her.

Steve felt a sharp twisting pang in his heart as he watched the assassins slide seamlessly into the foxtrot, bodies held carefully apart by the tension that permanently hovered between them. _I want that. I want dancing and jazz music and that same lovesick smile Clint doesn’t even know he has._ He was standing right there next to Maria, who for once looked like the brilliant blazing fire she kept hidden behind thick walls of ice. He could take her hand, like he’d wanted to for so long; he could ask her to dance, to hold him close to her flame, and he thought she’d say yes.

But he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, because Peggy was his one true love, the only one that’d been meant for him. He was never meant to be brought up from the Arctic ice, was never meant to be young in a new century; he was meant to be washed away in the North Atlantic currents decades before Maria was even born. To let himself love Maria would be to take more from this world than he deserved, would be selfish and greedy, would lead only to more pain. He had been granted his one miracle, Bucky’s return from the dead, and he’d take it and run. They’d revive Bucky Barnes from the depths of the Winter Soldier and the two of them would stick together like they always had, two against a world determined to beat them down. And he wouldn’t need Maria, no, he wouldn’t, because he had Peggy’s memory, and he’d have his best friend, and how the hell could he ever ask for more than that?

And then the worst thing that could happen did happen. Maria turned her face up to Steve’s, eyes so clear and bold behind her mask and smile that just barely wasn’t nervous, and asked, “So… do you want to dance?”

Steve’s breath caught in his chest in a way it hadn’t since the serum, in a way that threw him headfirst back to a shitty apartment in Brooklyn, lying curled on a bed and coughing incessantly and being certain that this was the time he wasn’t going to survive the night. He survived that night, though, and many more, but this one might kill him after all this time, because she was strong and fearless and gorgeous and so much like Peggy sometimes that it _hurt,_ and _I can’t I can’t I can’t_ \--

“I can’t,” Steve said abruptly. He caught her face beginning to fall and hastily added, “Dance, that is. I, um, never learned how.” He rounded his shoulders and looked at Natasha and Clint, laughing and so clueless about how much they loved each other; at Pepper smiling beatifically at Tony as he held her close. They made it look so easy and it wasn’t, it fucking _wasn’t._

“Oh.” Maria paused, looked over the dance floor as she regrouped. After a long moment, just when Steve thought he could suggest they go get a drink or make fun of Sam, her gloved hand was on his sleeve, deep red on black. “I could teach you, you know. If you want. I may have been a disappointment to my father in a lot of ways, but I damn well was the head of my cotillion class.” She had on a half smile made of self-deprecation and decades-old wounds that made Steve wonder if her dad was still around and how much trouble he’d get into if he punched the man in the face.

Steve hesitated. “I… I really can’t,” he apologized, regret and misery and ache filling his voice. The bottom of his stomach dropped out as Maria’s expectant expression carefully and precisely broke apart and rearranged itself into polite distance under her mask. She slipped her hand off his arm and he grabbed for it. “No, don’t--I just--Peggy was supposed to--”

“It’s fine, Cap,” she said, pleasant and distant as she gently pulled her hand from his grasp, and he finally understood what Sam and Clint meant when they told him she looked at him differently, because he hadn’t felt this chill from her in months _(she hasn’t called me anything but Steve in months)_ and he desperately wanted to go back. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” She backed up in big quick steps, widening the gap between them.

“No--Maria, _wait_ \--” But she was far enough away that he would have to make a scene to go after her. She nodded when she saw he wouldn’t follow her and began sliding through the crowds around the dance floor.

 _Maybe this is for the best. You were never meant to be here, remember?_ He could see the red of her dress slipping around the ballroom entrance, like the red of Peggy’s dress in their bar in London a lifetime ago, like the red star on Bucky’s metal arm, like the red that seeped into the blue and white fabric of his uniform where the Winter Soldier had shot him.

 _Maybe this for the best. You were made for greater things than happiness._ But sometimes he wished he had never become Captain America, wished he had stayed broke and asthmatic and too small to break chairs when he kicked them in frustration. He could have stayed skinny Steve, scrappy and headstrong and so damn reckless, could have married Peggy and lived the life he’d been meant for and watched the Chitauri invasion as an old man in his armchair.

But he _had_ become Captain America, and now he was here, watching his friends dance happily and wanting very badly to to rip something apart with his bare hands. He wouldn’t, though, because his whole life was a string of _shouldn’ts_ and _wouldn’ts_ and _couldn’ts_ and he wasn’t going to stop that now.

_Maybe this is for the best. She’ll be happier without you. She shouldn’t get mixed up with you anyway, Rogers. Maybe this is for the best._

And as he searched the crowds for Sam, remembering her crumbling expression and the gaping, cold pit in his stomach, he could almost believe it.

\---

Clint could be a real klutz sometimes, but he picked up physical movements the way Natasha picked up languages; he was the best dancer she had ever met. She wasn’t one to let men lead her onto dance floors without so much as a “may I have this dance,” but she also never turned down an opportunity to dance with him, and he knew it. The band was playing something jazzy and Clint spun her into a foxtrot, hand carefully resting on the low back of her dress.

“We don’t actually have to dance for that long,” Clint said, almost apologetically, as he stepped back to spin her. Natasha looked up, puzzled, and he hastily continued, “Not that I don’t like dancing with you; it’s just, um--” He darted his eyes towards the stage that Tony and Pepper had recently vacated. Natasha followed his gaze to Steve and Maria, who stood together, heads tilted towards one another. “I thought Steve might be less embarrassed to ask her to dance if we weren’t there. Just trying to give him a little push, you know.”

Natasha grinned. “I guess it makes sense for an archer to play Cupid,” she teased. “Though I never really pegged you as a romantic, Barton.”

Clint shrugged. “I can be romantic,” he insisted. The music changed and he seamlessly transitioned to a rumba, pulling Natasha closer to him as the dance floor crowded. “I’m romantic as hell.”

“Oh, yeah?” she challenged with a laugh. This was, after all, Clint Barton. Clint “when is Valentine’s Day,” “I accidentally dyed all my shirts purple,” “I forgot what you wanted so I ordered two of mine” Barton. She could believe that Clint took women on fun dates, or that he was courteous and considerate, or that he was good in bed-- _don’t go there._

“Yeah,” he retorted, mildly insulted. Before Natasha could begin to outline her skepticism he was dropping her into a deep, slow dip that drew a few whistles and cheers from the crowd. Upside down, Natasha could see Pepper watching them with a knowing smile. _Not again._ She didn’t have time to dwell on that, though, because Clint was pulling her back up with a hot long drag of a look that made her feel like she’d been out under the sun and was just about to burn.

“See? Romantic.” Clint sounded triumphant and just a little out of breath. Natasha was a bit breathless herself, not from the exertion, but from the way his hand on her back was _just_ not touching her skin and how much she wanted it to, or maybe from the darkening of his blue grey eyes as his gaze raked over her face. She felt the muscles of his upper arm move under her hand as he guided her through complicated step patterns. _This is not good,_ because since that fucking yoga class from hell she’d been avoiding any opportunity to witness him moving outside the field. On a mission, she could focus on her job and keep her head on straight; but lately, when she watched him spar with Sam or Steve, her objective observation of muscle mechanics had been replaced by rushes of emotions, by _want_ and _touch_ and _mine,_ and that just wouldn’t do. So she’d stayed away, kept herself busy; but now she could feel those muscles moving under her hand and all she could think about was closing the gap between them, was _want_ and _touch_ and--

“Uh oh.”

Clint’s grip on Natasha slackened and she blinked. “What?” Clint tipped his head towards the area where they’d left Steve and Maria. “Oh no,” Natasha sighed.

Steve was standing alone, arm reaching into the crowd and an utterly bereft look on his face. Natasha’s eyes swept in the direction of his outstretched hand and saw Maria hurrying out of the room, red dress swirling around her like a fall wind.

“I thought you said they liked each other?” Clint asked.

 _Idiots._ “They _do,_ ” Natasha groaned. She pulled Clint off the dance floor with a huff and a silent lament for all the dancing she was about to miss. Shoving her mask into his hand, she instructed, “Go talk to Steve, see if you can find out what happened; and _no,_ don’t give me that face, I know you love to gossip.” Clint turned with a grumble and set off through the crowd.

Natasha went in the opposite direction, moving quickly through the mass of people between her and the ballroom entrance. She stopped at the coat check for the flimsy shawl she’d brought before catching, out of the corner of her eye, a flash of red on the small balcony that was tucked into a corner. It had been a relatively warm fall so far, but the nights had been getting chillier and Natasha braced herself for the breeze that hit her when she pushed the door out into the night.

It wasn’t much more than a landing, warmly lit but still cold in the evening wind. Maria stood at the glass and steel railing, eyes trained on the crisp crescent of the moon in the inky sky. She didn’t move as Natasha approached, even when Natasha let her heels click on the slate flooring. _Not good._ Maria was always alert, and she never left her back exposed.

As she paused to reassess the situation, Natasha allowed herself to smile at how terrific Maria looked against the black sky and the city. She’d been reluctant to wear the deep red dress Natasha had selected for her off the rack of gowns Pepper had ordered. “I’m not wearing _that,_ ” she’d said, scandalized, as if Natasha had just suggested she wear a lobster costume. She’d tried to shove it back at Natasha, and when that failed, had tried to talk Pepper out of making her try it on. “I look ridiculous,” she’d growled as she stomped out of the dressing room.

What she’d looked was fantastic, and Pepper had teared up a little like she tended to do, and Natasha had piled her hair on her head with a victorious grin. “You look nice,” Natasha had insisted, both then and again as they got ready together in her apartment. Music had blasted as they sipped cocktails and Natasha artfully arranged Maria’s hair. “I feel like we’re having one of those typical American sleepovers,” Natasha remarked as she brushed blush over her cheeks. “Is this what sleepovers are like?”

Maria had laughed. “Fuck if I know; I never had one.” She paused to swirl on lipstick, then added, “I think we’re supposed to talk about boys, or who we want to dance with at prom.”

“Oh yeah?” Natasha had grinned as she tossed Maria a pair of shoes from her closet. “Well then I’ll ask you this”--she pitched her voice into a girlish falsetto--“are you going to ask Steve to dance?”

Maria had rolled her eyes, but also blushed. “No way, Romanoff. The only person who’s going to make a fool of themselves tonight is Barton.” Natasha had looked down at herself in her dress and thought, _yeah, probably true,_ and then they’d left the conversation behind.

But now Maria was out in the cold looking regal and fractured, and Natasha was experiencing an unfamiliar wave of fierce protectiveness. “Cold night to be out here alone,” she commented, coming to stand next to Maria at the rail. “Cold as fuck, one might even say.” They didn’t look at each other, just stared together into the moon.

“Yeah, well, it was a little stuffy in there,” Maria said, voice falsely cavalier. “Just wanted to get some fresh air.” She paused for a moment. “You should be dancing with Clint.” Her voice wavered a bit on _dancing_ and she looked down at her hands.

Natasha shrugged, the picture of unconcern. “Why would I dance with Clint when I could be enjoying this brisk evening air with you instead? Besides,” she said with a gentle nudge, “if anyone should be dancing right now, it’s you and Steve.”

Maria’s brittle laugh was swallowed by the wind. “Yeah,” she scoffed, “right. Me and Steve…” She let her voice trail off with a sigh and Natasha waited, willing her teeth not to chatter and break the silence. The quiet stretched on and on into the night until finally Maria said softly, bitterly, “Remember how I told you that I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself tonight?”

Natasha rewound the evening in her mind and paled as she remembered the context. “Oh, no, Maria--”

“--I was feeling confident because I was wearing this _stupid_ mask--” she tossed the mask onto the bench next to her “--and he was--that is, I _erroneously_ assumed that he was looking at me like--I don’t know! Like he might want to dance with me, I guess; and I felt good, I felt okay, so even though I tried not to, even though I told myself, ‘No Maria, don’t do it,’ I did. I asked him to dance and he said no.”

The Red Room did not have programs for comforting others, so Natasha took a stab in the dark. “Maybe he was just, you know, thrown, because you’re all dressed up and you made the first move? Maybe he’s just old fashioned.” Though that didn’t quite jive with the progressive Steve she knew. “Maybe he was just embarrassed because he doesn’t know how to dance?”

Maria let her head drop for a moment, like the weight of it was too much. “He doesn’t know how to dance,” she agreed when she lifted her head again and stared blankly across the city. “He said he never learned. so I offered. You know, to teach him. I’m very good.” She shrugged sharply and inhaled deeply before saying to the traffic below them, “He told me he couldn’t. Because Peggy was supposed to be the one to teach him.”

She turned then, away from the moon and the stars and the night. Her nose was pink from the cold and she wasn’t crying, but her blue eyes were glittering and rimmed with red. “What the _fuck_ am I supposed to say to that?” She asked in frustrated angry helplessness, vulnerable in a way Natasha had never seen. “How is _anyone_ supposed to compete with Peggy fucking Carter, first director of SHIELD and the _One True Love of Captain America?_ ”

“You can’t,” Natasha answered quietly as the cold seeped through her useless wrap. “You and Peggy are on two totally separate planes of existence. There is no logical universe where you should be competing with her for anything at all; and, furthermore, should a universe exist where you two existed in such a way, I’m pretty sure that’d you’d both say _fuck Steve Rogers_ and go about your business together, kicking ass and knocking heads or something.”

Anger was warming Natasha more than her stupid shawl and she continued insistently, “Maria, don’t do this, don’t play this game. You are accomplished and successful and talented, and tonight you look like sex on legs. Come back in with me, wave your middle finger in Steve’s face, literally or metaphorically, I don’t care. Throw on the Ice Queen act and dance with Sam, hell, hook up with Sam! Please?” She swallowed hard, uncomfortable with the loud emotions crashing and clanging like bells inside her. “I don’t want to leave you out here alone.”

Maria allowed her lips to twitch in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smile. “No, I don’t want--I can’t. I’m going to go home and take off this _stupid_ dress and these _stupid_ gloves and watch _I Love Lucy_ until I fall asleep. Thanks, though,” she sighed before pulling the door open. Natasha trailed after her to the elevator, not used to being in situations where there was absolutely nothing she could do. Maria resolutely looked away as the elevator doors slid closed. “You’re a good friend, Nat.”

 _Am I doing this because Maria called me her friend?_ Natasha wondered as she stalked back into the ballroom with a storm cloud over her head and scanned for Steve’s idiotic blond head.

 _Am I doing this because nobody’s ever called me a good friend before?_ She wondered as she yanked Steve away from his conversation with Clint, ignoring everyone else in the circle including, possibly, the mayor.

 _No,_ she decided as she pulled an amorous couple from a secluded window alcove and shoved Steve in instead. _I’m doing this because Maria is my friend and Steve is my friend and I want them to be happy and Steve is going to ruin everything._

“You’re a fucking idiot, Rogers,” Natasha announced.

Steve frowned warily. “Is this about Mar--Agent Hill?”

“‘Is this about--’” Natasha mimicked back at him, waving her arms in frustration. “Of _course_ it’s about Maria, you jackass! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Wrong with me?” Steve asked hotly. “What the fuck is wrong with _you?_ It’s none of your goddamn business.” He loomed over her as if to push his way out of the alcove.

“It is now, Steve, and you made it my business when you made Maria run out of here, and _I_ had to go look for her, and _I_ had to find her on a balcony, looking destroyed and freezing her ass off in that gorgeous dress that she’s now gone home to throw away.”

Steve stepped back. “That’s not--” He broke off and sank into the windowsill. “That’s not what I wanted. None of tonight was what I wanted.”

Natasha could feel her anger start to slip and ebb away as Steve’s shoulders drooped. _When did I become the team Agony Aunt?_ she mused as she settled herself on the sill next to him. “Well, then what the hell _do_ you want, Steve? Because I’ve been watching you for months and until tonight I would have sworn up, down, and sideways that what you wanted was Maria.”

Steve looked at his hands with the sad smile that was practically his trademark at this point. “It’s complicated,” he said to his hands, to the floor.

“I can do complicated.”

Steve sighed. “You know, I just--I never deserved Peggy in the first place; she was too good for me. But she was mine, you know? She was the love of my life.”

“This is a whole nother lifetime, Steve,” Natasha pointed out gently. “One that you still happen to be alive in. And Peggy, she--she lived a whole life in the meantime. I doubt she’d want you to be alone. Don’t you think she’d want you to find the same happiness she did?”

Steve spread his hands helplessly. “Probably? She was lucky enough that she found someone else that could make her happy; but Bucky is actually _back from the dead,_ Natasha. I can’t ask the universe for anything more. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Natasha studied him, trying to read the determined heartbreak written into the lines of his face. “So you’re just going to live sad and alone, even though Maria is _right here,_ because you feel like you don’t deserve to be with her?” Steve shrugged resignedly. “That’s idiotic, Rogers. That’s some Tony Stark levels of stupidity.”

Steve’s phone buzzed. “Is it?” He asked distractedly as he checked the message. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s _exactly_ what you’re doing to Clint.” He shoved the phone back into his pocket as he stood. “I have to go,” he said brusquely, and walked off before Natasha could protest.

_That’s not what I’m doing with Clint, it’s not. It’s not!_

But oh god, it _was,_ and she was the biggest hypocrite in the entire city of New York. She was Steve and Clint was Maria, and she and Steve were so busy being so goddamn righteous and self-denying that they were missing what was literally, seriously, right in front of their faces.

“Hey!” Clint poked his head into the alcove and smiled with relief when he saw Natasha sitting there. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where’s Steve? He wouldn’t tell me anything, sorry. What did you find out?” _That I’ve been so dumb, that you’ve been looking at me like I’m a sunrise and all I’ve been looking at is the glare._

“Let’s get out of here,” Natasha said abruptly, vaulting off the windowsill and grabbing Clint’s arm on her way to the exit.

“Whoa, hey,” he sputtered, stumbling along after her as she rushed across the ballroom and down the corridor to the elevator. “What’s the rush?”

Natasha looked up at him as they waited, not sure how she was going to hear the ding of the elevator over the bells that were ringing deep and clear inside her. “I need to tell you something,” she said and felt like she was going to laugh. “But not here. Upstairs.” The elevator arrived and she tugged Clint into it before jabbing the “DOOR CLOSE” button.

“Um, okay,” Clint said uncertainly, but he smiled anyway as they whooshed upwards. “You alright, Nat?” he asked as he followed her to her door.

Natasha pulled her gloves off the press her palm to the reader on the door frame. “I’m fine,” she assured him as the door slid open and they entered her apartment. She tossed her gloves onto the kitchen island, followed by her dangly earrings. Clint waited, loitering by the door as he loosened his already flopping tie. Natasha watched him with nervous buoyant energy floating higher and higher inside her. She felt herself pulled in different directions: she wanted to pull him to her by the tie, she wanted to dive into his arms and be held through the night, she wanted to sit him down and apologize for taking so long to get here.

Instead she hovered by the counter, nearly vibrating, and blurted, “I like to bake.”

Clint blinked. “Okay?” he asked with a small laugh, then paused. “Wait. No you don’t. You hate the kitchen, and you’ve never baked me anyth--” He gasped. “But you and Thor--but he said-- _you,_ ” he accused, coming forward, “are a lying liar.”

“Spy, remember?” Natasha shrugged, with a nonchalance that she didn’t feel. She turned and lifted her hair off her neck. “Help?”

Clint undid the clasp of her heavy necklace, as he had on thousands of gala missions. His fingers brushed her neck and she shivered; he obviously noticed, because he stepped back and asked, just a bit forlorn, “Nat, did you seriously drag me up here _just_ to confess that you love to bake?”

Natasha turned back around and bit her lip. “No?” she asked indecisively. Clint rolled his eyes. “Okay, yes, kind of, I did.”

“Why?” he asked, spreading his hands with exaggerated patience.

“Because--” _Come on, Romanoff, you can kill a man with your thighs, you can turn off your fears and you laugh in Death’s face. Don’t be Steve. Don’t run from what you want._ “Because Steve loves Maria and he won’t let himself just be happy with her,” she said in a rush. Clint’s eyebrows raised, but he said nothing, so she continued, “And he told me that I couldn’t say anything to him because I was doing the same thing to you; and I tried to tell myself that I _wasn’t_ and that I _wouldn’t,_ because I’m not afraid of anything--”

He still hadn’t said anything, was still watching her cautiously, hands jammed in his pockets like he didn’t trust them. Natasha took a single step so that they were in arm’s reach of each other. “But I _am_ afraid, and I _was_ holding you away from me, because you said you loved me and I don’t know if I deserve it, I don’t know if I’ll ever deserve you. But I don’t want to be Steve and I don’t want to hide from what will make me happy, not anymore. I thought that if I held small parts of myself away from you then--then I could stay away. But I can’t anymore, so I brought you up here to tell you that I love to bake, because it’s my last secret from you. Now you actually know everything about me.”

She waited, heart crashing and bells clamoring. “Nat,” Clint said hesitantly, “Natasha. Are you saying--?” His face was tentative and hopeful as he met her eyes. “Are you sure?”

Natasha smiled and couldn’t remember if she’d ever been this exultant, couldn’t recall ever tossing words like “exultant” around at all. “I don’t want to keep any more secrets from you,” she said seriously. “I don’t want anything but you.”

She couldn’t stop herself from reaching for his face, cradling his jaw as she pulled him to her. He was close enough that his breath merged with hers. “Are you _sure_ \--”

“Yes.” She closed the gap between them, pushing up on her toes to meet his lips with hers. _This is nothing like Tokyo, or Belize, or Zagreb, or_ \-- But the list ended there because Clint was opening his mouth over hers and moving his hands slowly from her waist to the exposed skin of her back and she was on fire, no longer fighting the flames she’d tried to keep at bay. There was no act this time, no script. There was nothing else to think about, no bombs to defuse or ministers to assassinate; just his fingers threading reverently into her hair and his lips trailing heat down her neck and her hands pushing his tuxedo jacket off his shoulders.

“Please don’t answer that,” he murmured into her collarbone when they heard her phone buzz. “ _Please._ ” His mouth brushed across her skin, his eyelashes fluttered on her pulse, and she was, after all, only human.

“Absolutely not,” she agreed, pulling his face back up to hers. He kissed her tenderly, sweetly, like he couldn’t really believe this was happening, and frankly she was just as shocked, because the one thing she had not planned on doing tonight (or possibly ever) was starting something with Clint Barton. As he guided them, stumbling and laughing, to the couch, his phone began to ring in his discarded jacket. Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Don’t answer that?”

“Wouldn’t _dream_ of it,” Clint said earnestly, sinking into the couch and holding her like he never intended to let her go. “I mean it, Nat, I--” He fumbled for words, and there were smudges of her lipstick next to his mouth and on his rumpled shirt, and he was so perfectly _Clint_ that she leaned into him and pushed a long, heady kiss onto his mouth and hoped that it would say what she couldn’t quite yet squash into words. The _want_ and the _touch_ and especially the _mine_ were surging inside her like the tides as he returned the kiss, his mouth hot on hers and his hands sliding up her ribcage. Her fingers pushed the top button of his shirt out of place, then the second, then--

“Miss Romanoff, Captain Rogers is outside.”

“ _Seriously?_ ” Clint moaned, and Natasha had to agree, because this time she knew _exactly_ what JARVIS was interrupting and she really wanted it to continue.

“Um, tell him I’m not here?” Natasha started to ask when a loud pounding began at the door.

“Nat!” They froze as Steve’s muffled voice came through the door. “Nat, I know you’re mad at me, but if you’re in there… Please let me in, I really need to talk to you.”

Natasha looked and Clint and he looked back, frustrated longing printed all over his face; she suspected hers looked similar. “Do you want to, I don’t know, hide?” she finally asked with a regretful sigh.

“No.” Clint slumped. “We’re caught anyway. Just... toss me a beer or something.” Natasha pressed one last lingering kiss to his lips, then went to the door, futilely trying to press her hair and makeup back into place. She opened the door--then stepped back in shock.

Steve’s hair was disheveled and on end; his eyes were bloodshot and stared right through her. He strode in without even glancing at her mussed hair or smudged makeup. She wasn’t sure if he even noticed that Clint was on the couch that he collapsed into.

“It’s Bucky,” he said, and there was relief and terror and hope and misery burdening his voice. “They found him.”

 


	3. Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! Thank you all so much for reading, it really means a lot to me!
> 
> Always and forever, thanks to santiagoinbflat and baygull, who are the best and without whom this would absolutely not have been posted!

**TEN**

Steve knew how to behave in a waiting room. He had, after all, spent the majority of his pre-serum life in one doctor’s office or another, waiting for verdicts on either his own health or his mother’s. When Natasha had broken her ankle on their first mission together, Steve had calmly called Fury, texted Barton, then sat with a stack of National Geographic magazines until a doctor came to give him some news. He understood that doctors and nurses were very busy people. He was, ordinarily, a pretty patient guy.

Unfortunately for the staff bustling around the Stark Industries Avengers Medical center, there was nothing ordinary about this evening. At all.

“Excuse me,” Steve said, trying to remain polite even as he dragged a man in scrubs off his course. “I’m Steve Rogers, and my friend is back there. Can you _please_ give me some information?”

The kid ducked his head, just like the previous ten people Steve had accosted, and sheepishly recited, “I’m sorry, Captain Rogers, but there is no information I can give you at this time.”

Steve reeled off the last few words along with the nurse before deflating. “Yeah, I know. Just--wanted to check,” he sighed, then waved the guy along before sinking into the couch and staring at the reptilian Jackson Pollack print on the wall. “Circle,” it was labeled, and _isn’t that convenient,_ because here he was, pacing circles around this waiting room while his entire existence cycled back upon itself. _You catch me and I’ll catch you:_ he and Bucky had always been pulling each other of fights, out of laboratories, out of the Potomac, and now he’d completed the cycle and was pulling Bucky out of the Winter Soldier.

 _But you did it, you saved him. Chill out._ Steve knew he was supposed to be thrilled, but it was 8 am and he’d been sitting in this waiting room since midnight. He had no information, and Natasha had disappeared to who-knew-where, and he wanted answers.

[---]

Nine hours earlier, just as the party was starting to swing, Natasha had been lecturing him when Thor had texted that the Hulk had engaged Bucky. He’d quickly weighed his options and decided that, if they ended up bringing Bucky in, Natasha would forgive him for walking away from her. She hadn’t chased after him to finish her point, and he’d pushed her, Maria, and the entire disastrous masquerade from his mind as he went down to the task force office to wait for Thor, Bruce, and hopefully Bucky.

Sure enough, less than half an hour later, they’d arrive in an armored truck; but before Steve could get a word in to anyone, Bucky had been rushed off into the medical department and Bruce and Thor were hustled off to a debrief. After a moment’s hesitation, Steve had chosen to follow Bucky’s path into Medical. he’d only made it through two sets of doors before he’d been turned back, and no amount of yelling or pleading had convinced the polite young nurse to let him through.

Stymied, Steve called Natasha, thinking she’d be able to succeed where he’d failed even if she was mad at him. When her phone rang into voicemail, he didn’t panic; when Clint’s did, too--well, he did.

 _Why aren’t they answering their phones? Did something happen? Are they still at the party? I can’t go in there like this, though. Where did Bruce and Thor go? Where is everyone?_ He could feel his breaths coming faster and faster, could feel frantic panic pressing up through his lungs. Four hours ago he would have called Maria (and he probably should have, anyway, considering that she was technically part of the team); it wasn’t that she’d now slam the phone down on him, but he liked to think that he wasn’t _that_ much of a jerk, to look for comfort from someone he’d just completely alienated. For the first time in a while, he had no idea what to do, so he’d stared at the little phone in his big trembling hands until the panic had completely enveloped him and he’d run. Barrelling through one set of doors after another, Steve had rushed for the elevator to the residences, guided by the blind need for somebody, _anybody,_ to help him get through this. He was banging on Natasha’s door, about ready to go back to the masquerade and drag Sam out of it, when the door had opened and Natasha had let him in.

In retrospect, he realized that he’d interrupted something significant. It was now so obvious that her lipstick had been smudged and her hair out of place, but in the moment Steve had been too shaken and desperate to do anything other than collapse on her couch.

“It’s Bucky,” he’d told her, trying not to let his voice break. “They found him.” Natasha’s green eyes had widened and she’d whispered something in Russian before sinking into the couch and pulling him into her arms.

The thing about Nat that nobody ever believed was her staggering level of compassion. She was more nurturing than any assassin had a right to be, and in truth was entirely gentle and motherly when the occasion called for it. Steve knew how much she ridiculed hugging, so when she pulled his head to her shoulder and wrapped her arms as far around him as she could, he burst into tears.

He’d really thought he was ready for this, prepared to find Bucky and take on whatever challenges that would follow. And most of him _was_ ready, had been ready since the helicarriers had crashed; but now he was actually faced with the reality that they had a mysteriously programmed assassin sedated in the medical lab, and what if the de-brainwashing didn’t work, and what if he didn’t remember Steve at all, and what if the 21st century was too much of a shock to his already compromised mind, and _what if this is all a colossal failure?_ It was so much, everything was so much: Bucky lost and found again, losing Peggy in more ways than one, feeling so lost in the city that he’d once called home, fucking things up with Maria beyond all repair. And hell, Steve had always been a crier, anyway; tonight was no time to change that. So he sobbed for a while and Natasha silently rubbed his back until he finally looked up with a wet laugh. “Sorry.”

Sometimes Steve wondered how Natasha could smile so kindly when the world had been so cruel to her. “Don’t worry about it,” she said gently, producing a box of tissues from who-knew-where. “The  first time I went back to the Red Room as a SHIELD agent, I puked the whole way home. We always think we’re ready to face our ghosts, and it’s never as easy as we think it’ll be.”

Steve blew his nose loudly and gave her a sidelong look. “Why do you always get to dispense the wise and sage advice?” he grumbled. “When can I have a turn?”

Natasha’s smile was mysterious. “You gave me some wise and sage advice already,” she said, but refused to elaborate, instead changing the subject. “So. They got him.”

Steve nodded. “He’s down in medical, only been there about thirty minutes now.” He reeled off the rest of his pitifully limited information, trying to concentrate on the positive _(Bucky is safe Bucky is safe Bucky is safe)_ instead of the unknowns. As she spoke, Natasha’s face slipped into analysis mode, which was somehow a comfort. When he was done, she stared out the window with a wrinkled forehead for long moments.

“Okay,” she said finally, her gaze snapping back to his. “Okay. I’m going to go get Sam and Tony from the masquerade. You’re going to go back to the waiting room. Barton’s going with you.” She looked over her shoulder to where Clint stood propped against the doorway to her study, bowtie dangling around his neck.

 _Where the hell did he come from?_ “Um… When did you get here?” Steve asked. It’s not that he was embarrassed to cry--the whole “boys don’t cry” version of masculinity was, in his opinion, a load of bullshit made up by men who’d never seen war. Still, he couldn’t believe he’d been that unaware of his surroundings.

“Been here the whole time,” Clint said with a shrug. “You nearly sat on me, so I made myself scarce. Don’t worry about it,” he added, tapping his hearing aid when Steve started to apologize. “I turned the volume way down. C’mon, let’s get down there. Nat, you’ll meet us?”

Natasha had nodded and squeezed Steve’s hand before shooing he and Clint from the room. Clint had kept up a steady stream of conversation all the way to the medical center, chattering about archery targets and some bet he had going with Thor over who told better jokes (“Obviously me, right, Steve? Yeah. Of course.”) Once they’d sat down in the waiting room, Clint charmed a nurse into bringing them coffee, and they slipped into a companionable silence.

Steve appreciated the effort, just as he appreciated how quickly Natasha had extracted Sam and Tony from the masquerade. “It was almost over,” Tony lied with a shrug. “Who the hell cares about shareholders when we’ve got _real_ work to do?” He marched off to badger the head nurse as Sam, tugging his tie loose, came to sit next to Steve.

“You don’t have to stay,” Steve protested as Sam settled in with a magazine. “I’m sure you were dancing with someone much more interesting.”

“Eh.” Sam lifted a shoulder and grinned. “She was a Cowboys fan, and, more importantly, turned out to be Rhodey’s date. It wasn’t going anywhere.” Steve would have argued, would have insisted to Sam and Clint that this was too much, that he wasn’t panicking anymore, _I’m asking too much of you,_ but Clint had already started talking to Sam about the Packers’ playoff chances, and Steve was just-- _tired._ He was out of energy, out of adrenaline, and his eyelids were so heavy...

“Just go to sleep, Steve,” Natasha said from across the room, a hint of amusement in her voice. “We won’t let you miss anything.” _I shouldn’t, Bucky needs me, I need to be awake, what’s the point of being a super soldier if I can’t stay awake when it fucking matters,_ and yet his eyes still drifted closed. His sleep was fitful and he jerked awake often, panicked that he’d missed something or that Bucky had escaped. The team had evidently taken shifts to keep him company, because each time his eyes snapped open he was immediately reassured by Clint that nothing had happened, by Rhodey that nothing had changed, by Sam that everything was fine. When he woke for good around 7 am, Natasha was curled in an armchair, wearing jeans and a comfortable-looking sweatshirt and peeling an orange.

“No news,” she said before Steve could ask. He smiled self-consciously and took the apple she offered him. “SHIELD’s still got Bruce and Thor wrapped up. Tony’s been howling at everyone he can find, but all of Phil’s people are stonewalling.”

“Bet he’s loving that.”

“Exactly as much as you’d expect,” Natasha agreed. Steve tried to look collected and put together under the assessing gaze she swept over him. Sleep had erased his panic and replaced it with a great, clawing need for answers, so he was confident that he no longer seemed as off-kilter as he’d felt the night before.

Apparently he passed her undefined test, because she stood and stretched. “Now that you’re no longer drooling all over the couch, I’m going to find Coulson and shake out some answers for you.”

This startled Steve into standing as well. “Nat, no, don’t, it’s okay. I’ll do it. You haven’t spoken to Phil since--”

“I know,” she said swiftly, “but you need answers and you’re in no shape to get them.” She looked up at him with a quarter of a smile and patted his arm. “I’ll be fine.” She walked off before he could thank her for being there, for calling Phil even though his return to life had torn her apart. But she was gone, so instead Steve took to pestering each nurse and SHIELD agent that passed him, hoping to get answers before Natasha was able to find the Director.

[---]

So here Steve was thirty minutes later, staring at the Jackson Pollack painting and knowing that he _could_ continue to bother people for hours and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference. Helplessness was something Steve hadn’t encountered in a long time, and he didn’t like it. _If I could just have something actionable, or a timetable, if someone could just give me something to go on--_

“Look sharp, Rogers.” Natasha materialized next to the couch _(one day I’ll figure out how she does that)_ and tipped her head sharply. “The doctor’s on her way out.”

Steve’s head jerked up. “What--”

“Captain Rogers?”

Steve leapt to his feet as a young woman, sharply dressed under her lab coat, pushed through the closest set of double doors. As she drew nearer, he realized that she was _very_ young, ever amongst the relatively youthful set of SHIELD agents that roamed the hallways.

“Yes, I’m Steve Rogers,” he said, extending his hand and trying not to over-squeeze the small hand placed in it. “Are you here to take us to the doctor?”

Natasha sighed a little behind him. “This _is_ the doctor, Steve.”

“ _You’re_ the doctor?” Steve sputtered. he looked at the young woman, who looked about 18, as far as he could tell. “But--I mean, but you’re practically a baby.”

“I’m 26,” the woman said with only a little disdain. “My name is Doctor Jemma Simmons, and I work directly under Director Coulson. And, _not_ that it’s any of your business, but I had two doctorates by the age of 17, and I am _more_ than qualified--”

“Don’t mind Steve,” Natasha put in as she reached around him to shake the girl’s hand. “He thinks we’re all children because he’s 97 years old. I’m Natasha Romanoff. I didn’t have any degrees at 17, but I _had_ killed at least twenty people--”

Steve saw Dr. Simmons’ eyes widen in fascination and interrupted before this became a detailed field trip into Natasha’s past. “I’m sorry, Dr. Simmons, I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m sure you’re very qualified and just--what can you tell us? I’m dying out here.”

Dr. Simmons smiled sympathetically. “Yes, I know, I’m so sorry. I understand what it’s like to be waiting when it’s one of your closest friends back there.” In another conversation, Steve would have wondered who this young woman could have waited so impatiently for, but today he was only focused on Bucky, so he poured all his concentration into Dr. Simmons’ rapid British speech. Bucky was stable, but still is stasis while Dr. Simmons’ partner examined his prosthetic arm for kill switches and triggers. “Once Dr. Fitz is done, we’ll be looking at the connections between the arm and his brain to make sure he’s in total control. We’ve got a gamut of standard tests and physical examinations to run, plus his initial psychological intake. Physically he’s healthy and seems to have been taking care of himself, eating right; all good signs. I’m completely confident that we’ll have him awake and back to himself in the next few days.”

_“Days?”_

Natasha put a hand on Steve’s wrist. “These things take time, Steve.” She looked at Dr. Simmons, who nodded. “It’s better if they’re thorough, careful, and safe. My de-brainwashing took at least a month, but with Stark’s tech and Dr. Simmons’ expertise, you’ll have your best friend back in less than a week.”

Steve bowed his head. Obviously Natasha was right, and he knew it; he’d been waiting to see Bucky again since the helicarrier, a few more days didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Yelling “ _fuck_ the grand scheme of things” wasn’t going to solve anything, and he’d already been rude enough to the doctor.

“Thank you, Dr. Simmons,” Steve said on a sigh. “I appreciate all your hard work. Sorry about… before.”

Dr. Simmons smiled. “That’s alright, Captain. It’s a difficult time.” She nodded once before pushing back through the double doors.

It felt oddly quiet after the doctor left, despite the bustle that flowed around them. Steve let Natasha steer him back to a chair, then perch next to him. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to go get some sleep in a real bed?” Her smile tipped to the left the way it did when she was worried and trying to hide it. “A few hours would do you good. We wouldn’t let you miss anything.”

Steve stared at his clasped hands. he hated making people worry about him. “Surprisingly, no, I plan on staying right here.” Natasha opened her mouth to argue and Steve firmly continued, “Bucky would always--Whenever I got out of the hospital, Bucky would always be waiting outside. I can’t--I have to--” _I have to be here for him, I have to wait for him, I have to--_ There weren’t words deep enough to fathom how intensely Steve needed to be Bucky’s anchor, how critical it was that he stay exactly where he was until Bucky woke up.

“I know,” Natasha said, quiet as she interrupted his admittedly brooding silence. She wrapped her hands around his and waited until he looked up. “I get it, Steve. I understand. We’ll take care of you.” She held his gaze and smiled reassuringly.

Steve had never put much stock in luck or fortune; still, he looked at Natasha’s determined face and realized that he was lucky all the same. “You’re a damn good friend, Nat; you all are.”

Natasha pushed lightly from her perch. “Stop, Rogers,” she drawled. “You’re going to make me blush.” She squeezed his shoulder on her way to the exit. “Sam’ll be here in a few minutes with a change of clothes and some real breakfast. Call me if you need me; I’ll be around.”

Steve watched her slip into the corridor with a faint smile, then picked up the first National Geographic on the pile and began to read.

**\---**

Natasha looked up at the brownstone building, then back down at her phone. _This is where Maria lives?_ When she’d pulled the Brooklyn address from the Stark Industries database, she’d figured Maria lived in one of those trendy renovated areas; not because Maria was necessarily trendy or hip, but because she seemed like a person who liked huge plate glass windows and angular black furniture. Instead, Natasha climbed to the third floor of a well-kept Brooklyn Heights walk-up, listening to the snatches of laughing children and barking dogs behind the doors she passed. Maria’s door was painted navy, and there was evidence of a complex security system in the molding and door frame. She knocked quickly and waited, rocking back on her heels with an unusual case of nerves.

Natasha had never been to Maria’s apartment before, and was a little surprised to find herself there now. After the masquerade had spilled over into…the _thing_ with Clint that she still hadn’t really processed, and then _that_ had been interrupted by Steve, she’d been busy, and too wired to sleep until she collapsed into bed around noon. It was dark when she woke, and her intentions of rolling back over were foiled when, amidst the emoji-laden texts from Sam, she found one from Maria: _going home for the day, I’ll get your shoes back to you later._ Natasha had shot up in bed, because even she knew that working together after a breakup (or rejection, or whatever) was bound to be unpleasant and probably taxing. And before maybe she wouldn’t have cared, maybe before they started up ladies night or before Maria had let her see the cracks in her armor; but now she _did_ care, so here she was on Maria’s nondescript doormat with a grocery bag and an awkward smile.

“Nat?” Maria frowned around the door. “What are you doing here?”

Natasha shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Striving for lightness, she said brightly, “It’s my understanding that when the prom goes badly for someone, their friends are supposed to show up with ice cream or booze.” She hefted the grocery bag a little. “I brought both.”

There was a pause in which Maria was clearly debating whether to accept her offer, thus appearing vulnerable, or turn her away and reject her friendly overture. Natasha waited, hoping that the ice cream wasn’t melting and that she hadn’t pushed too hard, that she wasn’t completely miscalculating their friendship. Finally Maria said, “I think you’re thinking of a breakup on _Sex and the City,_ ” but she gave her a small smile and stepped back to let her in.

By Natasha’s estimation, Maria’s condo was much more expensive than she should be able to afford, even as the head of Stark Industries security. The entryway turned the corner into a living area that was dominated by a wall-to-wall bookshelf, including a sliding ladder to reach the books right under the ceiling. Natasha had never seen Maria reading anything other than mission briefings or personnel files, and yet here was an entire library, punctuated by three double hung windows set in deep sills. The rest of the space was equally surprising: one wall was hung with framed posters and art in various hues, the mid-century modern couches angled around the TV were bright red, and the white tiled backsplash in the stainless steel kitchen showcased a cheerful yellow stand mixer that seemed to get regular use. She’d never pretended to know Maria well, but bright colored furniture still seemed completely out of character, and she had to give the other woman credit for being able to keep her personality so well concealed while at work. She could feel Maria watching her as she cased the room, eyes boring into her back as she tracked the staircase that bent out of sight to the second level.

“Why are you _really_ here, Romanoff?” Maria had her arms crossed when Natasha turned to face her. “Is there an emergency with the Soldier?”

Natasha sighed; sometimes this _reaching out_ thing was for the birds. “I’m _really_ just here to see if you’re okay.” A lesser person, with less control over their body, would have squirmed under the piercing glare Maria shot at her. “Honest to god, Hill. Last night sucked enough and I can’t imagine working on Steve’s projects all day helped.” Maria didn’t say anything and Natasha felt her resolve begin to falter. “I’ll leave, though, if you want.”

Maria sighed and shook her head, a small smile ghosting across her face. “Sorry,” she said. “I missed pretty much every class in the ‘how to be friends’ series.”

“You and me both. Wasn’t one of the electives the KGB offered.”

The smile on Maria’s face grew to a grin. “I’ve got a firepit up on the roof,” she offered. “Leave the ice cream, but bring the booze.”

Natasha pulled bottles of wine from her grocery bag while Maria crammed the coffee ice cream into the freezer and rooted through a drawer for a corkscrew. They climbed the angled staircase to the second floor, where Natasha unabashedly poked her head into a tiny guest room and a nicely sized office with big windows and built-in shelving filled with even more books. She could practically hear Maria rolling her eyes while she nosed around, but all Maria said was, “This way, snoop,” before pushing Natasha through her bedroom to the staircase that lead to the roof.

“You may think you prevented me from seeing anything interesting,” Natasha said with a smirk as she flopped into an Adirondack chair, “but they don’t call me the best spy in the world for nothing.” She’d caught quick flashes of the room as Maria had hustled her through: the red dress from the night before crumpled in the back of the closet, the open mission folder filled with reports in Steve’s slanted 40’s penmanship and Thor’s flowing calligraphy, the plain black leather notebook that was clearly a journal and which Natasha dearly wanted to page through. She curled her feet under herself, uncorked a bottle of wine, and contemplated how best to combine her goal of cheering Maria up with her sudden need for information.

“Stop,” Maria commanded as she lit the logs already stacked in the steel firepit. “I can _feel_ you planning your interrogation from here.” As the fire caught and sparks leapt against the dark sky, she fell into a chair and popped open her own bottle. “No questions until half of this is gone.”

Natasha shrugged; she could work with that. Lifting her wine towards Maria, she toasted, “За нашау дружбу!” It was another cold night, but the fire jumping against the darkening sky was enough to keep the chill at bay. They talked about Pepper’s masquerade dress and the constellations splattered across the sky and the blonde woman Sam had spent all night trying to talk to.

“Wait… Carol?” Maria asked with a grin. “Sam spent the whole night chasing Rhodey’s date?”

“Typical Sam, right?” Natasha raised an eyebrow, then paused. “Hold on. When did you meet Carol?”

Maria looked down. “I ran into her on my way out last night,” she finally sighed. “I barely spoke to her, though, since I was busy escaping with the last shreds of my dignity and all.” She slumped back in her chair and groaned. “God, how embarrassing.”

Natasha eyed her and considered which card she should play. Remembering how Maria had practically jumped out of her skin at the mention of the word “love,” she instead offered, “If it makes a difference, I think Steve is a moron. He’s obviously crazy about you.”

Maria looked askance. “Right. because who doesn’t want to get involved with a cold-hearted ice queen who lives in a library?”

“Oh, _shut up,_ ” Natasha scoffed. “We both know you’re only icy when you want to be. You _do_ have a lot of books, though.” Aside from the built in bookcases, there had been a long row of cookbooks along the kitchen counter and a few teetering stacks next to the bed.

“They’re my father’s,” Maria said with a sigh. Natasha didn’t need to see the clouds crossing Maria’s expression to know there was a story there. “Well, some of them, at least. Most of his library is back in Chicago, but when I joined SHIELD he foisted this place and a bunch of his law books on me so that I wouldn’t _embarrass_ him.”

There were many adjectives one could apply to Maria, both positive and negative, but embarrassing was definitely not one of them. “This is a nice place, but he sounds like an asshole,” Natasha commented. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Maria said with a small shake of her head and a big gulp of wine. “I spent the majority of my childhood trying to be perfect so that he’d stop blaming me for my mother dying in childbirth. Horseback riding, etiquette, ballet; you name it, I was the best at it.” Her expression soured. “If I won, he’d give me some attention, but nothing I did was ever really good enough. By the time high school rolled around I was over it. I didn’t have any friends, anyway, so I shipped off to military school, then West Point. Graduated top of my class, worked my way up to Deputy Director of SHIELD, and he still thinks _I’m_ going to embarrass _him._ ” She snorted derisively. “Like anyone in global security gives a shit about Illinois state senator Ernest Hill.”

The rooftop was quiet as Natasha slotted this new information into what she already knew about Maria. She followed protocol precisely not just because of the military background on her record, but also because that had been the only way to get attention as a child. Her father had never personally connected with her; no wonder she had struggled to maintain friendships. There was a clear line between the rejection from her father and from Steve, and--

“No,” Maria warned, waving her finger in Natasha’s direction. “I can see you drawing lines and connecting dots. Do not draw some kind of misguided Freudian correlation between my father and Steve. _Don’t,_ ” she said when Natasha tried to interject. “My father is a jerk and Steve is just not interested, and they’re totally separate. End of story.”

“Fine,” Natasha said, raising her hand in defeat. “I will draw no lines and connect no dots.” _Even though there’s totally a connection there and I’m talking to Clint about it as soon as I get back._ Her face warmed as Clint’s face popped into her subconscious, and she turned hastily to the fire. Trying a different tack, she asked, “Will you at least tell me why you were at the Tower today? I mean, are you a masochist?”

Maria rolled her eyes. “I can’t stop working just because Steve and I had an awkward encounter.” The hitch in her voice suggested otherwise, but she continued, “I’m still part of the task force, so I had to go in and deal with that. Then there were some security specs and protocols to work on, since the Sold--since Bucky will be living with Steve once he’s released from Medical, and, well--” She looked down and started to peel the label off her wine bottle with deliberate tugs. The fire snapped into the silence that stretched long enough for Natasha to wonder if maybe she’d misstepped, if maybe Maria was one of those people who actually meant it when they said they didn’t want to talk, if maybe she shouldn’t have come after all. She was about to say, _never mind, I shouldn’t pry,_ when Maria crumpled the label and said softly, “I still care about him, I guess. Obviously I misread something and that sucks, but I can’t just… turn it off, you know?”

There was a time when Natasha hadn’t known, had been able to switch off every feeling that wrestled its way into her heart. But that had been before Malibu and New York, before SHIELD had toppled and she’d been forced to realize that she need friends, not just the associates and informants strung along her web of contacts. It once would have been a lie, but now Natasha could say, “Yeah, I know,” and sigh, and it was the truth.

Maria was quiet for a moment, eyes unreadable in the flickering light of the fire. “It’s just,” she began at last, lips pursed as if trying to stop herself, “It’s just. They tell you to be nicer, to smile more, to share things about yourself. That’s how to make people like you. And, I mean, it works, because now--well, now I have friends, like you and Pepper and _Steve_ \--” She broke off and scowled at the sky for a moment. “They don’t tell you that you’re going to develop all these… _emotions._ ” Her voice weighted the word as if she were talking about snakes.

 _Man, we really should have become friends sooner._ “That was the hardest part of joining SHIELD for me,” Natasha confessed, staring into the fire as the memories crossed her vision. “I could fight, I could shoot, I could learn the handbook back to front; but Fury started talking about sympathy and empathy and compassion and I just… could not compute.” She laughed a little. “Six months later, we’re out in the field and Clint’s eardrums get permanently damaged and I’m feeling _emotions_ about someone else for the first time in my life.” Up to that point in time, she had feigned the emotional responses that everyone else at SHIELD had effortlessly demonstrated; seeing Clint so distraught, though, clutching her arm with one hand and his ear with the other as they stumbled to the extraction, had resonated deep inside her and filled the gaps between her heart and her brain. By the time he walked out of his hearing aid fitting a few days later, she’d learned enough ASL to ask “Want to go shoot something?” with her hands as well as her voice. It wasn’t the first day of their partnership, but it was the first day of their friendship; and now…

Natasha realized that she’d lapsed into silence. She looked up and found that Maria was grinning at her. “What?”

Maria shook her head. “The two of you, I swear to god. At this rate I’m going to have to get Stark to organize a game of spin the bottle.”

 _Shit._ “No no no,” Natasha quickly said, nearly stumbling over her words in her haste to get off this train of conversation. “We are not talking about Clint. Aren’t these things supposed to be about how great we are and how terrible men are? I’ll call Pepper, she’ll back me up.” She would (probably) tell them both eventually, after she talked to Clint again, after things felt less fragile. The Red Room had taught Natasha how to be careful with fingers on triggers and knives on arteries, but not with hearts; her friendship with Clint was the only one she’d ever feared breaking, and that fear was compounded now that they seemed to be going somewhere she’d never been before.

Fortunately, Maria had moved on, and seemed to have finally bought into the concept of the evening. “Steve’s not terrible,” she said thoughtfully, propping her head on one hand. “Maybe that’s why this sucks so much, you know? Like, if it was somebody else then I could at least be glad that I don’t have to pretend I like their shitty music anymore. Steve…” Her wistful smile in the firelight made Natasha’s heart twist a little. “He’s just so _good,_ you know, honest and strong and all.”

“I mean, he _is_ Captain America.” Natasha felt obligated to point out that all the descriptors Maria was using could just as easily be slapped onto a magazine cover around a shield. Pity party or not, if she was in love with Captain America instead of Steve Rogers then it was probably for the best that it hadn’t worked out. “His entire persona trades on being a good, honest, strong guy.”

Maria broke out the patented _do you think I’m an idiot_ face that had cowed entire squadrons of seasoned agents. “Jesus Christ, Romanoff. Seriously?”

Natasha shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first to fall for the legend instead of the man himself. I wouldn’t blame you.” Captain America received more fan mail than the rest of them put together, and nearly half of it came from singles around the country enamored with his square jaw and so-called square values.

The sigh that Maria released was deep enough to have come from her toes. “But _why_ would I be interested in Captain America when I know Steve? Sure, he’s honorable and can lift cars, or whatever; but he’s also a sore loser who’s adorable when he tries to lie and who laughs with his entire body.” She hugged herself a little, a sad tilt to her lips. “He gives his whole heart when he loves something, you know? He makes breakfast and serves it like it’s his magnum opus. He loves the team, and Bucky and Peggy--” _And not me_ hung off the end of her sentence so clearly that Natasha could have grabbed the words out of the air. “He’s been through so much, and yet he’s still optimistic and unbroken. It’s something I find…” Maria took a deep breath and Natasha got the sense that she was picking her words carefully. “Admirable. I’d like to be that resilient.”

The conversation stayed with Natasha over the next few days. Steve had insisted that the team cut down on their rotations with him in the waiting room, Clint had been tasked to a 72 hour post-extraction surveillance team at the site of Bucky’s retrieval, and everyone had retreated to decompress after the flurry of events. By the time she next sat with Steve in the medical center, two days had passed and she’d done nothing but bake scones and stew over Maria’s love life.

 _How can you give yourself to everyone, over and over?_ She thought in Steve’s direction. _How can you trust so many people with your heart? And why won’t you let Maria be one of them?_ In two days, she’d amassed many questions for Steve. They were too prying and too invasive, especially considering that he was neck-deep in personal trauma and angst. She shouldn’t ask, really, she knew better, but her mouth was opening anyway and--

“Hey,” Steve said, awkward as he looked up from the Nelson Mandela biography Maria had quietly mentioned was next on his list. “By the way. I realized that I”--he leaned closer and lowered his voice to a whisper--“interrupted something between you and Clint the other night.” Straightening, he returned his voice to a normal volume. “I just wanted to say that I won’t spread it around. And that I’m happy for you both,” he added hastily. “Should have said that first. You deserve love and, well--you’re my friend and I want you to be happy.” He smiled, genuine and warm, and how did he do that when his life was such a mess?

“Steve, I--” Natasha knew dictionaries of words in multiple languages, and yet on thank yous she always stumbled. “Thanks,” she finally made out, shy in her sincerity. “It’s new, and I’m--it’s--”

But whatever else it was fell off her tongue as the doors to the patient area were pushed open. “Captain Rogers?” This doctor seemed even younger than Dr. Simmons _(had the SHIELD Academy been recruiting from kindergarten classes?)_ and had a Scottish accented voice that stopped and started as he seemed to search for the words he was looking for. “I’m Doctor Fitz, and we’re, um--we’re ready for you, if--if you’re ready.”

Steve’s long legs had already carried him halfway across the waiting room when he turned back to Natasha. Underneath the standard Rogers stoicism was thinly-veiled fear. “Nat, are you--will you come with me?” For a moment, she could see the skinny kid he’d once been, a small and feisty shadow haunting his now-large frame. “I might need--”

“Of course I’m coming.” She didn’t know if she was ready, but was damn sure it didn’t matter. They followed Dr. Fitz through a maze of hallways, Steve’s jaw working while Natasha typed a fast text message to the rest of the team. He finally led them into a small room and stopped short.

The room was divided in two by a plate of glass, currently greyed out. “A SHIELD agent is with Dr. Simmons and Sergeant Barnes are on the other side of the glass,” the doctor explained. Steve immediately reached for the stainless steel handle that protruded from the door that separated the two spaces. “No--don’t,” Dr. Fitz said, moving to intercept. “We don’t--we don’t know how he’ll react, seeing you again. We’ll clear the glass so he can see you, and if he reacts positively then we can move forward. All--alright?”

Steve nodded, terse, and Natasha saw that his hands were trembling. She put a hand on his back. “You read for this?” she asked, voice carefully neutral.

“Been ready.” He looked down at her with a nervous twitch of his lips before nodding to the doctor, who poked at his tablet a few times before, finally, the opaque grey slowly faded into the floor.

Bucky sat on an examination table, fully dressed in sweatpants and an old SSR t-shirt. His brown hair was still as long as it had been at the Triskelion, but it seemed as though they’d at least given him a shave while in stasis. The overhead lights bounced sharp patterns off the plates of his metal arm as he performed reflex tests for Dr. Simmons, who stood to his right at a precise distance. In the back left corner of the room, watching each click and whirr of his arm with an impassive eye, was Melinda May, Natasha’s former mentor. It wasn’t surprising to find her a part of Coulson’s crew; it _was_ a surprise to see the normally gunless woman armed.

Natasha could feel Steve’s heartbeat racing as Bucky came into view. “Easy,” she reminded him out of the corner of her mouth, and he bowed his head a little. “Can they hear us?” she whispered to the young doctor, who quickly ducked his head in a nod.

“Do you know who I am?” Steve’s voice was rough and thick, full of the loss and grief and hope that must, Natasha thought, be so heavy after seventy years. “Do you remember me?”

Bucky looked up from Dr. Simmons. His eyes were just as blue as they’d been on the bridge back in April, but they lacked the Russian cold Natasha knew she too had once had. _A good sign._ His gaze, a little lost but in no way dull, swept deliberately up and down Steve’s dimensions. After a moment’s pause, he nodded and said, each word carefully strung together, “Steve Rogers. You and I--we--grew up together. You were--smaller.”

Natasha felt the tension roll off Steve as if repelled, and god, she didn’t know if she’d ever felt more relieved. Steve swallowed hard and quickly dashed his hand across his face. “Yes, we did,” he said finally with shining wet eyes. “I was.”

It was time for her to step out, to let Steve have the reunion he’d been waiting for since the day she’d handed him that file from Kiev. Her hand was still on his back and she patted him once before rocking back on her heels to go.

“Natalia?”

She froze. Nobody had called her Natalia in a long time, but on the other side of the glass, Bucky was reaching for her, and he was saying her old name again in a voice that curled like a prayer. “Natalia Alianovna? Is that you? Did you make it out, too?”

Everyone looked at each other: the young doctors exchanged single raised brows, while Steve and Melinda each stared at Natasha. She hadn’t prepared for this, she wasn’t ready for this; but she nodded to each of them before looking directly at Bucky and stepping closer to the glass.

“Yakov,” she said softly, pressing her hand to the glass separator. “You remember me?”

On the other side of the glass, Bucky broke out into a grin. “Best in your class,” he said. Natasha realized that he was no longer carefully selecting words, that he was emoting and reaching to place his metal palm across from hers on the barrier. She wanted to look back at Steve, to tell reassure him that her relationship with the man on the other side of this wall couldn’t hold a matchstick, let alone a candle, to his.

But Steve had already stiffened and stepped back, and a torrent of excited Russian was pouring out of her old teacher, and she had a distinctly sinking feeling that the damage was already done.

** ELEVEN **

There were parts of himself that Steve worked to keep away from the public persona of Captain America. The world didn’t need a Cap who hated to floss, who seriously contemplated cheating when he was the banker in Monopoly, who tended to shriek a little when watching cat videos (or, for that matter, who watched cat videos at all). The serum hadn’t rid him of his quick temper or his stubbornness, and as Steve changed the glass settings so Natasha and Bucky couldn’t see him standing on the other side of their crisp conversation, it became rapidly clear that he was just as jealous as he’d always been.

It’s not that Steve was in love with Bucky; not anymore, at least. Steve had loved Bucky the only way a small scrappy kid could love his ladykiller of a best friend: quietly, fiercely, and with every month’s girlfriend poking holes in the zeppelin that was Steve’s hope. He’d wished and pined until the day after the Stark Expo, when he’s walked around their newly quiet apartment and realized that all this love was ever going to bring was an empty dull pain that throbbed under his ribcage. He’d set love aside before the serum could amplify it, before _I deeply regret to inform you_ could come in the mail and tear him to shreds. Then Erskine had transformed his body and Peggy his heart; then he’d discovered that his friendship with Bucky was a more enduring type of love than the flame he’d carried for so long.

But none of that meant it wouldn’t sting when Bucky seemed to remember more about the KGB than the friendship that had been built before the Empire State Building was complete. Doctors Fitz and Simmons had left, leaving the tablet that controlled the glass wall. Pressing one or two buttons would provide a translation of the conversation across the divide, but it felt like an invasion of privacy, intruding on an exchange he clearly wasn’t meant to be a part of.

Instead, Steve was glowering at the wall and trying to tamp down on his envy when Tony skidded into the room. He was sweaty and rumpled, and had clearly just climbed out of his suit.

“Sorry I’m late,” he panted, shoving at his hair. “I was in Malibu on business when I got the text.” He peered around the room, brown eyes keenly flashing as they took the scene in. “What’s up with Mulan?”

Steve knew that the people in the observation room couldn’t see or hear them, but he could have sworn that the SHIELD agent’s eyes moved to glare in their direction. “Agent Melinda May,” he answered. “Natasha’s mentor, the Director’s right hand woman, legend amongst SHIELD agents. They call her the Cavalry.” He enjoyed the flash of fear that crossed the other man’s face.

Tony gulped a little. “Well that’s… only mildly terrifying.” he looked around the room, hands constantly moving as if looking for something to fiddle with. “Where’s everyone else? How long have these two been communing?”

Steve shrugged and nudged a chair with his foot. “About an hour now. They’ve all come and gone; there’s not really much to see or do.” _Not even for me._ Hopefully Tony would take this as a hint to leave. Steve respected Tony: sure, their tempers didn’t match up too well, but Tony was brilliant, brave, and far more selfless than he liked to pretend. All the same, Steve could quickly name ten people he’d rather deal with at the moment.

Naturally, Tony dropped into a chair and tipped it back onto its hind legs. He watched Natasha and Bucky chat animatedly, then said, “This wall has a translate function, you know; here, give me that tablet--”

“I know,” Steve said shortly. “I’m letting them have their privacy.” _Even though it should be me in there, even though_ I’m _supposed to be the friendly face welcoming him to the 21st century._

He wasn’t looking at Tony, but he could feel the long look coming from that direction. “And you don’t seem the least bit bitter, either,” Tony said with a nonchalant wave of his hand. He was studying Steve the same way he studied engine schematics, one hand unconsciously framing his (in Steve’s opinion) stupidly shaped beard.

“I am _not_ bitter,” Steve said through clenched teeth, fully aware of how bitter he sounded. _You are Captain America. Captain America does not get bitter. Except about justice._

“Right,” Tony agreed easily. “That’s what I said.” His eyes darted from Steve’s face to the Russians a few times. “I can understand why you would be, though, if you were.” He was using the distracted I-don’t-care tone of voice that Steve _knew_ was false and yet still wanted to contest. “I myself have some experience in this kind of--hypothetical, of course--jealousy.” He looked up with one brow raised and gestured Steve towards the other chair in the room.

 _Tony Stark, jealous?_ Now this was something Steve needed to hear. He wasn’t so shallow as to assume that wealth solved all problems; on the other hand, he’d yet to see Tony fail to get what he wanted, ever. With heavy skepticism, Steve lowered himself into the offered chair. “What the hell does the Great Tony Stark know about jealousy? You’ve never met anyone or anything that you couldn’t buy.”

The expression on Tony’s face twisted for a second before he looked at Steve out of the corner of his eye, because, Steve had noticed, Tony only ever sidled up to things that were emotional; he did _not_ come at them head-on. If he could, the man would probably propose to Pepper from the other side of the world. “Believe me, I’m aware of how cliche this is,” he began, distracting Steve from his speculation, “but I was one of those _poor little rich kids_ everyone hates to hear about.” He rolled his eyes. “Blah blah I was too smart for my age group, blah blah my mom was a socialite who didn’t have time for me. Blah blah blah. My dad was always working: when he and Stane weren’t building the company, he was holed up in his office or flying up and down the Atlantic Ocean. I was a bright kid: I knew my dad was more interested in his project than being a father.” He shrugged. “Turns out dad was spending all that time looking for your frozen ass.”

Steve froze in his chair. “Tony,” he breathed. “I didn’t--I never--” Obviously someone had to have coordinated a search if Steve was sitting there now; he knew that. And yes, he knew that Howard and Peggy had founded SHIELD together. But he’d always assumed that Howard, being at the top of the food chain, and being very busy womanizing his way through the country, would have delegated the search to some lesser peon. Especially once he had a wife, had a son. He shouldn’t have been spending all his time reading the Atlantic ice as if it were a treasure map.

Tony held out a hand. “Don’t get all chivalrous on me, grandpa. Not your fault, you didn’t ask for it; and, look, what I’m not saying very well is: when I figured out that I was being raised by the butler because my dad was out looking for you, I was bitter. I was jealous. I blamed you for all the issues I had with my dad, and that was _before_ SHIELD even brought you out of the ice. Then you show up on the helicarrier all… noble and spangly, and I’m--well, you know, just a fucked up kid with a pimped out jetpack.”

Now he was looking anywhere and everywhere else, hands fidgeting with a screwdriver he’d pulled from his pocket. Steve felt for the young kid Tony had been, and began to see how Howard’s neglect had created the billionaire persona everyone thought they knew: calloused so he wouldn’t get hurt, but with a constant need to be liked, to be seen, to be adored. What’s more, he had a newfound respect for this man, who’d been provided a textbook path to supervillainy and had still steered his life onto a different path.

“Why are you telling me this?” Steve asked finally, because he could still feel the bitter tang of jealousy biting at the back of his throat.

Tony shrugged a little. His eyes tracked Bucky’s movements on the other side of the glass. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “You and I are _oceans_ apart in a lot of ways. I prefer emotions and all that nonsense to just… not happen.” He scratched his nose and looked away, clearly uncomfortable. “But we’re teammates and, um, friends? Or whatever, maybe we’re not, I guess. I just can’t have you moping around with that sad puppy face.” This was a textbook Tony deflection. “It bums me out, and when I’m bummed out I can’t work.”

He tapped his screwdriver against the arm of his chair as he stood. “I guess my point, if I have one, is that jealousy feels so all-consuming, but it fades. My dad was a jackass, but I was still his son and he still loved me in his own jackass way. Your boyfriend”--he pointed across the glass--“might be remembering Mother Russia with more clarity right now, but he was a Brooklyn boy before Hydra got their hands on him, and he’ll remember that soon enough.”

Tony ducked his head and left before Steve could say anything. He could hear his brash voice stretching down the hall as Tony demanded the SHIELD agent posted outside to get Steve anything (“ _anything,_ got it?”) he asked for. When Steve had first met Pepper, he hadn’t understood how she could possibly endure a romantic relationship with Tony, her antithesis in many ways; now he recognized that Tony cared aggressively, and only expressed this in the fits and starts typical of a kid who doesn’t know the next time his dad is going to break his heart.

There was a soft click and Natasha stepped out of the glass room. “Steve.” Her arms came up to wrap tightly around herself, and there was a haunted look in her eyes for the briefest of seconds before she shook herself and restarted. “Steve, I--I’m sorry about--”

Steve stood, knees cracking a little in disuse. “Don’t be.” There was enough guilt in these forty square feet already. “What’s up?” He raised an eyebrow against her next attempted apology until she released her breath into a wordless sigh instead.

“We talked about the Red Room, about Hydra. He understands that he was in cryo, and that it’s 2014.” Her lips pulled to the left. “He feels a lot of guilt.” She looked up at Steve, eyes wide and sad, and he knew she was tallying her ledger, remembering all the debts the Red Room had entered for her.

He didn’t want to ask, hated the desperation that pressed deep between his shoulder blades. “Can I--can I talk to him?”

Natasha nodded quickly. “You can go in,” she said apologetically. “Sorry, that should have been the first thing I said. I’m just…” She trailed off, digging the flats of her palms into her eyes.

Steve pulled her into a quick hug, and he knew she was shaken up because she leaned heavily into him and squeezed back. “Go find Clint,” he suggested, letting a teasing smile cross his face. “Times like these are exactly when you need someone you love.”

That at least got her to roll her eyes and wrinkle her nose in a distinctly Natasha way. She seemed to struggle with herself for a moment before at last asking, “What about you? Don’t you need somebody, too?”

Steve smiled and tried not to let it look sad. “I’ll be fine.” He pushed Natasha to the door, then through it when she hesitated. Once she’d disappeared around a corner, he went back to the room, squared his shoulders, and opened the dividing door.

The last time he remembered being this close, Bucky had literally been beating the life out of Steve, and Steve had been letting him. _Does he remember?_ Without the leather jacket, without the knives and the tac boots, the man on the table seemed smaller, deceptively harmless. Only the shining metal arm, interlocking plates silently moving, reflected the danger that lay beneath the blank surface.

Steve nodded to Agent May as he drew closer to his old friend, remembering the physical Colonel Phillips had made every rescued member of the 107th sit through. Steve had leaned propped against a tent pole as Bucky had flirted outrageously with every nurse in the tent. Agent May made the Hulk seem flirtatious, but Steve almost wished that Bucky was trying her anyway, just for old time’s sake. Maybe that would set his anxiety at ease. He hated that he was quiet, but he didn’t know what to say. He hated the glimmer of sympathy he could see in Agent May’s otherwise bored expression.

“Steve,” Bucky said finally, his voice rough as it broke the silence. “Steve.”

“Yeah, B--” Steve broke off, realizing he had no idea how to address this person on the table. Steve had called him Bucky since they were seven years old, but that name went with a cocky smile and waved brown hair. _James_ was who he’d been to his mom when he’d stayed out past curfew ( _James Buchanan_ if he came home with lipstick on his neck), _Barnes_ was the cynical soldier. _Yakov_ Steve didn’t know at all. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I should ask: what would you like me to call you?”

This question seemed to make Bucky uncomfortable. He stared at his metal hand, watching his fingers curl and uncurl dispassionately. “What name did you use for me?” he finally asked, eyes still focused on the soundless shift of his joints.

“Bucky,” Steve said firmly. In the schoolyard, in class, crossing battlefields and falling off trains, he’d never been able to crush such a vibrant personality into a typical, everyguy name like James. “Bucky Barnes.”

A little smile pulled up the corner of Bucky’s mouth, like maybe he remembered asthmatic seven year old Steve standing between himself and two bullies, knees shaking and knuckles bloody; maybe he remembered how the girls had trailed after him with his name on every lipsticked sigh. It was a little smile, but it made his face so much more familiar that Steve could have burst with joy. “Bucky Barnes,” Bucky repeated slowly, as if it was a new flavor he was rolling over his tongue. After a moment he nodded and said hesitantly, “Sergeant Bucky Barnes, 107th. Right?”

Steve swallowed the lump forming in his throat. “Right.” Bucky smiled a little more, too much for something as simple as a name; then again, Steve had never lost his name, not like this. “Would you like to leave the medical center?” he asked as the conversation lulled. _Choices,_ he reminded himself. _Give him the choice. Let him control his life again._

Bucky looked confused: a frown creased the center of his forehead. “Where would I go?” he asked in that new, slow way.

“There’s an entire apartment for you, if you’d like,” Steve offered; then, as Bucky’s eyes widened and he drew back, “Or there’s--I have a spare bedroom. You can stay with me as long as you like.”

Bucky looked calmed by this offer, and after some consideration he tipped his head to the right and said, “Okay.”

Steve turned and nodded to Agent May, who blinked in agreement before leaving the small room. “She’s going to get one of my teammates to escort us,” Steve hastily explained as panic flashed across Bucky’s face. “Sorry, sorry, I should have said that first. Sorry.”

Bucky raised his hand from his knee. “It’s okay,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m not that fragile.” Steve didn’t know how to follow that, because he’d never seen someone more fitting the description of a baby bird. Bucky caught sight of his face, and seemed to have reclaimed some of his sense of humor, because he admitted with a slow smile, “Alright, maybe I am. And I seem to remember that you…” He was obviously searching the card catalogue of memories in his brain. “You always thought you needed to take care of me.”

 _Well I should have, I should have kept you away from the front, away from Captain America, away from Arnim Zola and from that fucking train._ But that was decades ago, and it was too late to change, and then Bucky was carefully asking, “Natalia told me you two are on a team of heroes? That you fight villains with the son of Howard Stark?” and Steve was so grateful for the question, for the Brooklyn vowels that were beginning to curve Bucky’s speech into something familiar, that he threw himself into answering his questions until there was a knock at the door.

Of course Maria was their escort, because she _was_ part of the team, after all, and either the universe or Agent May had a sense of humor. “Will this be a problem?” she asked, voice brisk even as her eyes betrayed worry.

Steve caught Bucky watching their low conversation with interest. “Not at all,” he said, maybe too breezily to be believable; but Maria just pursed her lips and nodded before stepping closer to the examination table.

“I’m Maria Hill, Head of Security,” she said, extending her hand close enough for Bucky to take it if he wanted to, but leaving enough room that he wouldn’t feel threatened.

To Steve’s surprise, Bucky shook her hand. “Maria Hill,” he recited as if from a database. “West Point, Madripoor, Deputy Director of SHIELD. Specializes in strategy, tactics, and munitions. Born in Chicago, Illinois, to Ernest Hill, state senator, and Mariela Lopez Hill, deceased.” He grimaced and dropped her hand, the frown reforming on his face. “I’m sorry.”

If this information--or the fact that Bucky knew it, or that Steve now did, too--bothered Maria, she didn’t show it. “That’s me,” she confirmed with a sharp nod. “Shall we go?”

The hallways of the medical center had been cleared in advance, which Steve found spooky but which Bucky clearly found comforting. His strides were long and he favored his left side as they moved through the labyrinth. As previously arranged, JARVIS remained mute as they rose through the tower, and Steve spent the silent ride trying not to think about how Maria was feeling after Bucky’s data dump. _Not the time, Rogers, not the time._ And it probably never would be.

At long last, just as Steve was starting to seriously regret living on the 78th floor, they reached his apartment. He unlocked the door and Bucky wandered in after him, looking only a little like a newly adopted puppy. Maria waited at the door, and Steve doubled back when he realized she hadn’t entered. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” he offered, knowing as soon as he said it that it was the dumbest thing to come out of his mouth in a long time. _Of course not, you moron._

Maria’s disbelieving eyebrow raise said exactly that. “I don’t think so, Steve,” she sighed. Something like regret swam briefly across her eyes. “We’ll have either a Stark Industries guard or SHIELD agent posted on the floor, and of course the rest of the team is on call if you need help.” She bit her lip, an unfamiliar motion that made Steve’s eyes flick to her mouth at the worst possible moment. “Just--promise me you’ll call one of us if you need someone. Okay, Rogers?” Steve nodded, surprised at the surge of emotion in her voice, but she turned on her heel without another word.

Steve shut the door and leaned against it. He let his eyes drift shut in a quick moment of selfishness, of _I fucked up, I fucked it all up but I don’t know how to fix it._

“She likes you.”

Bucky was standing in the middle of the living room when Steve’s eyes flew open. “What?” He walked across the apartment to the guest room in an attempt to divert the conversation; the last thing Bucky needed to know about the 21st century was that Steve was still romantically incompetent. “Here’s your room, if you--”

“You like her.” Bucky was still watching him, head tilted the same way he’d used to do when working on particularly difficult arithmetic sets, the same way he’d line up Hydra agents at the other end of his sniper scope. “I can tell by the way you move around each other. Are you…” He squinted as he searched for the right words. “Going… steady?”

Steve gave up, because he was tired, because he was so damn glad to have his best friend back that he would have talked about grass growing if Bucky wanted. “We’re not,” he said. “We’re not anything. I screwed it up.” He dropped onto the couch and gestured to indicate that Bucky could sit wherever he wanted.

After a moment of consideration, turning his head to see all his options, Bucky gingerly placed himself at the other end of the couch. He peered at Steve; then, with the trademark smirking smile that Steve had sworn he’d never see again: “Well, isn’t that what you always do?”

Steve couldn’t have stopped his grin if he tried. “Yeah, Buck,” he said. He’d never been happier to be a failure at relationships. “That’s exactly what I always do.”

**\---**

Natasha did not like to admit that she needed anything beyond the basics of survival: food, water, shelter. In the Red Room, needing more than that was a childish demand, equivalent of saying that what the Motherland provided was insufficient. Needy girls spent more time in the chairs, screaming or crying or begging for long-dead mothers. Natalia Alianovna was the star pupil, with hair like blood and eyes like poison. Natalia Alianovna never needed more than Mother Russia gave.

It had taken her time to rid herself of this concept, to open her call channel on an op and actually articulate that she needed backup. She’d spar with Melinda for too many rounds, with too much blood dripping from her nose, until she’d swallow the metallic taste on her tongue and gruffly admit she needed a break. She’d struggled even more with the idea that typical people needed more than the biological basics, things less tangible: identity, independence, support. She’d quickly figured out independence, and managed to pull her identity out of her well of personas one heavy bucket at a time.

Support she was still loathe to admit necessary; but seeing Yakov _(James--Bucky--)_ had thrown her around a bend, surprised her in the worst way. She hadn’t expected him to remember wrapping her little hands around an automatic rifle, metal fingers clinking against the barrel as he guided the gun towards the target. She’d thought he’d been wiped so many times that he’d never recall their work together, the training and the dancing and-- _oh god_ \--the killing. They had been the Soviet emblem come to life: she the sickle, all sharp finesse and graceful curving slices; he the hammer, strength and brute force and bludgeoning power. They were the Red Room’s poster children, razing entire villages together, and she’d hoped to be the only one who had to carry that weight.

“Nat?” Clint pulled open his door, eyes grey with concern. “JARVIS said you were loitering in the hallway looking, as he described it, ‘distraught.’”

“Busybody,” Natasha muttered in the direction of the ceiling. She hadn’t knocked because she still hadn’t decided if she was there for comfort or for distraction. She _thought_ it was for comfort; but that would be admitting that she needed someone, needed _him,_ and that was difficult enough of a task even before the impromptu trip she’d just taken into her bloody history. But she didn’t know how to say any of that, not when she’d just unearthed Natalia from places long buried. Not when their relationship had just crossed a bridge she had never known how to build in the first place.

Clint watched her for a moment, then nodded as if he’d come to some sort of decision. “Let’s get dinner,” he said, pulling on his worn leather jacket and tossing her a spare. “Outside the Tower. You’ve been inside for too long.” Natasha didn’t argue: she couldn’t remember when she’d last smelled fresh air. She followed him into the elevator and out under the waning November sun as he began a one-sided conversation about how boring his surveillance detail had been.

“Where are we going?” Natasha finally interrupted, after they’d walked about five blocks and gotten only about halfway through his litany of complaints, most of which related to the frigid temperatures of his rooftop perches.

Clint walked a few more steps then stopped, face turned into his collar in an atypical show of shyness. They were standing in front of a small Italian place with painted glass windows and a green striped awning that snapped in the wind, and he watched it flutter for longer than seemed necessary. “I thought--” His eyes flicked to hers, then away again. “Pasta, right? That’s what you usually eat when you’re feeling guilty.” He scuffed his foot against the sidewalk and let a passing bulldog sniff his hand.

Natasha felt a strange kind of warmth spread through her. “You noticed that?” Everyone assumed that she wanted knishes and pirozhki when she was down, the comforts of her so-called childhood. But when she came back from Moscow or Yaroslavl with visions of human traffickers and still-active gulags pressed into her eyelids, she couldn’t stomach her native tastes. Instead, she would head to an Old World hole in the wall like this one and hope that the bowl of pasta she ordered was made with enough love to heal whatever tragedy she’d just left.

Clint didn’t quite roll his eyes, but his smile held a measure of fond exasperation. “I notice lots of things about you, Nat.” He held the door open for her and she ducked under his arm, not bothering to hide her curious stare as they were led to a small table in the back.

She waited until the waiter had taken their orders and dropped a basket of warm bread between them before pursuing the conversation. “So what other things have you noticed about me, then?”

Clint twirled his fork between his fingers as if it were one of his arrows. “Well… you do this little nose twitch when you’re indecisive. You sing in the shower, usually in Russian, and it’s one of my favorite things about missions with you. You and Bruce have a weekly appointment which I’m pretty sure is a chess game. And your face looks a particular kind of a sad when you have to talk about the Red Room.” He quirked his lips left and right, as if debating what to say, then sighed. “Look, Natasha, I… I’m over the moon about what happened the other night, okay? _Ecstatic._ But that doesn’t--I mean--fuck, I’m so bad at this.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m just trying to be your friend right now, is all. I’m always here if you want to talk; but if you don’t want to talk, or if you want me to leave so you can eat your alfredo alone, I won’t be offended. You’re still my best friend, no matter what else happens, okay?”

Their waiter reappeared with their food and Clint stopped talking, a pink flush spreading across his face. He shoved a large, too-hot forkful of lasagna into his mouth and swore while Natasha inhaled the buttery comforting scent of alfredo sauce and melting cheese. As a spy, it was disconcerting to find that someone could pick out her habits and tells; as a person, though, it was a surprisingly nice feeling to know that he’d noticed. Obviously he wasn’t called Hawkeye for nothing, but there was a difference between observing something and actively choosing to remember it, to care about it.

She watched him as she took her first bites of the pasta in front of her. He was still a little pink and was very intently not looking at her. _This is it, then, isn’t it?_ They hadn’t had a chance to talk about what had happened, but Natasha knew that vague half-finished declarations of love were usually followed by actual romantic relationships, wherein people shared their feelings and held hands in the park, sometimes even at the same time; and while she wouldn’t mind doing all those idyllic hand-holding things, she didn’t always like feelings or talking about them when they insisted on surfacing. She could shut Clint out, cut the conversation in a different direction and keep her emotions tightly locked away. That was what she usually did; and while she had no complaints with this coping mechanism, there was something enticing about opening up and knowing that he was listening.

And he paid enough attention to know what she ate when she was sad. And she’d never seen Clint blush before, not even when the Wakandan ambassador had groped him in a case of mistaken identity during a rescue mission. And it turned out that connecting with people and revealing parts of herself in the process was not nearly as painful as she’d always thought it would be. And it was hard to convince herself that he was going to run away, not when he was sitting across the table with interest and compassion (and a terrifying amount of love) written in the smile lines around his eyes.

“In the Red Room he was Yakov,” she began after a fortifying bite of pasta. Clint looked up with a pleased startled smile. “We were Yakov and Natalia, the Hammer and the Sickle, far before we were the Soldier and the Widow. We thought were in love; we thought we knew what love was. We thought we were unstoppable and that we could run, but it turned out we weren’t, and we couldn’t. They only started wiping his memory after we were caught and I--I had hoped that he wouldn’t remember, because those missions we did were horrific and he already has enough weighing on his mind. But he remembered it all, he remembered _me,_ and so I had to remember, too, and it’s--” _It’s like an anvil on my soul, it’s a stain I’ll never wash out, it’s what wakes me screaming in the night._ “It just makes my ledger feel a little heavier today.”

Clint reached over and put his hand over hers. He looked at her seriously, and Natasha could just see him forming the words she hated most: It’s not your fault, Natasha. You can’t be held accountable. Of course it wasn’t her fault, of course not; but it had still been her hands on throats and her knives between ribs. They had been her actions if not her choices. He knew how hollow those words rang, he knew how it felt to wake up with blood under your fingernails that you didn’t remember drawing. _Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say--_

“Did you just say that you two were a _thing?_ ” Clint’s face hadn’t shifted from its serious arrangement, but his eyes shone with humor that faded into embarrassment almost immediately. “Shit. I’m so sorry. What the fuck is wrong with me.”

Natasha felt a grin spreading across her face in spite of herself. Clint would never spout empty words of comfort when he could instead stick his entire foot in his mouth. It was the last thing she’d expected, but somehow (possibly because it was the least comforting thing anyone could say) it made her feel a little better. Nothing made her past feel more distant than having people in her life that didn’t expect her to kill them if they messed up.

“Hey,” she said, because Clint looked like he was going to push his face into what remained of his lasagna, “hey, it’s fine. I don’t know why, but that helped.” She twirled up the last of her fettucini while Clint’s expression lifted in relief. She signaled to the waiter to come collect their plates, and when he’d gone, she reached tentatively for Clint’s upturned hand. His fingers twitched reflexively when hers brushed against his palm. “I appreciate that you’re honest with me,” she said simply.

“Always,” Clint affirmed, squeezing her hand. Natasha realized that they were looking at each other for too long without speaking, with deep emotion that she might, after very intensive consideration, be forced to label as “love,” and it should have been weird; it should have made her jump away from the table and run home.

But then Clint smiled brilliantly, and instead of sprinting for the door, she opened her mouth and out fell: “Do you want to go on a date?” She’d been many types of women, and none of them were shy; and yet she could hear it in the way her words caught in her throat. _I’ve never been on a real date,_ though, was a pretty good reason for her voice to teeter and wobble. That, and the sudden flare of heat she felt when his eyes met hers. “We could go back to my apartment,” she offered with a slightly less nervous voice. “To bake cookies,” she clarified as Clint’s lips curved suggestively. _But maybe also to do other stuff. If you wanted._

“Is that a euphemism, Romanoff?”

 _It could be._ “No! God.” They each dropped cash onto the table before strolling back to the tower, and when the backs of their hands brushed, neither of them pulled away.

[---]

Baking had always been a private endeavor, something she could ground herself in. Normal people baked, and as the new SHIELD agent that everyone pretended they weren’t whispering about, Natasha had desperately wanted a slice of that normal in her life. She sat in creperies and cupcakeries and boulangeries with tiny cups of coffee and filled a thick red journal with notes on how various doughs and batters rose under fire. She graduated from box mixes to heavy cookbooks to her own recipes. She went to cake frosting classes at craft stores and wrangled an assignment at Le Cordon Bleu specifically so her cover could attend a lecture on baked alaska. As hard as she tried to make the world better, there was still so little she could control at times, so little she could do to make a difference in a scenario. It was a comfort to pull a cake from the oven and think, _I couldn’t control my adolescence and I can’t control how Fury solves this week’s crisis, but I can make something delicious, something beautiful, something good._

Sharing her love of baking with Thor hadn’t been easy, per se, but she’d been able to do it because he was a friend in need and it was hard to resist him when he looked like a sad golden retriever puppy. Clint, as was almost always the case, was a different story. This wasn’t help or comfort; this was sharing for the sake of it, for the sake of him knowing her better, and that made Natasha feel exposed as she bent to unlock the cabinet where she kept all her supplies.

“You _lock_ your cabinets?” Clint asked from over her shoulder.

“Only this one,” Natasha insisted. “There’s this _bird_ guy I know who is always poking through my kitchen looking for the coffee.”

“Maybe the bird guy wouldn’t have to tear apart your kitchen if you just kept your coffee in a normal place,” Clint retorted as he bumped her hip with his and helped carry the canisters of flour and sugar over to the island counter.

“Maybe the bird guy should drink less coffee,” Natasha suggested with a smirk, but she nudged him back as she started combining ingredients in her large bowl. Over the years they’d perfected the ability to dance around each other in tight places, coexisting in sniper nests and hotel rooms and stakeout cars without touching. Parts of that had shaken loose now, and Natasha enjoyed finding that they each leaned closer when they spoke, that his hands lingered on hers when he passed the butter or vanilla. Their conversation traveled the ordinary paths around teammate gossip and bad jokes, but underneath it was a nearly electric current, stronger than anything she’d ever manufactured on one of her mission-dates at SHIELD.

“When me and Barney were kids on the farm, our mom would let us build a blanket fort while she baked cookies,” Clint said thoughtfully as Natasha twirled the dial on the oven timer. Clint had a specific tone of voice for each member of his family: angry towards his father, nostalgic about his brother, regretful for his mom. This line of conversation didn’t seem to fit any of those attitudes or the vaguely flirtatious aura that swirled around them; he rarely talked about his childhood, though, and even more rarely without bitterness.

“What exactly is a blanket fort?” Natasha asked with a curious smile. “And what do you… do with it?”

Clint smiled, and it was all nostalgia now. “You tell stories and read books and just… _be_ in it, you know?” Natasha did not know, and she raised an eyebrow to say so. “Right.” His eyes cast around the room speculatively and then, with a level of excitement that seemed more appropriate for a much different blanket-related activity, he eagerly suggested, “I can make one, and show you?”

Natasha thought this sounded like a ridiculous idea for a first date, but Clint’s enthusiasm was endearing. “This had better be the best blanket fort you’ve ever made,” she warned as the oven beeped. Clint pressed a swift kiss next to her ear before skidding out of the kitchen towards her bedroom.

Twenty minutes later, Natasha had piled a plate with warm chocolate chip cookies and Clint had rearranged her living room beyond all recognition. She didn’t know where her coffee table had gone, and all her chairs and sofas had been turned on their sides and draped with more blankets and quilts than she remembered owning. “Um. Clint?”

He popped out of an opening between two chairs. “Over here!” He seemed to be having a disproportionate amount of fun, and over the past twenty minutes her curiosity had mounted to astronomical levels. _What could possibly be so much fun about hiding under a blanket?_ “Come on,” he said, clearly reading the doubt she wasn’t making much effort to conceal. He reached to flick all the lights off, then took her hand. “It’s going to be fun, I promise.” Natasha breathed a quick sigh before dropping to her knees to follow him through the chairs, crawling carefully so as not to drop the cookies.

Clint stopped in what she thought was the center of her living room: it was difficult to tell since they were surrounded by furniture, the sun was setting, and he’d turned off all the lights. There were couch cushions and throw pillows piled on the floor and against a side wall that she was fairly certain was her missing coffee table. She understood why Clint would want a stream of oldies music emanating from somewhere within the folds of this construction, but couldn’t quite figure out why it needed to be ABBA. “So… we sit in the dark together and eat cookies?” Natasha asked as she settled herself onto the cushion next to his. Maybe she needed to reassess his ability to plan nice dates.

“No, uh, we--” He reached around and finally flipped some kind of switch. Strings of white lights, attached to furniture and the blankets above their heads with scotch tape, twinkled on. With the overhead lights off and the setting sun collecting shadows, the soft glow of the strung lights made the small space feel intimately cozy instead of cramped. Clint looked back at her, his smile equal parts proud and flirtatious. “We sit in this nice twinkly light together and eat cookies.” He reached to snag one off the plate still in her lap.

 _Who knew Clint was such a romantic?_ (Okay, yeah, he’d said so, but he also insisted that he told better jokes than Thor and that wasn’t always true.) “This is nicer than I anticipated,” Natasha admitted around her own cookie. “Although I’m wondering what we’re going to do once the cookies are gone…?”

“Well,” Clint said with a rakish grin, taking the plate off her lap and setting it aside, “there’s always--” And then he tilted her chin before kissing her deeply, one hand sliding into her hair. They had been hesitant the night of the masquerade, each unsure in their own way, but there was none of that shyness in the way he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close under the soft lights. The sparking electric tension that had been flowing between them since they’d left the restaurant was now exploding into lips on pulses and hands sliding under hems, and Natasha shivered when his fingers brushed at the skin under her shirt.

“Great suggestion,” she solemnly agreed when Clint pulled away with a questioning glance, hands still curled around her waist. She leaned in, lips brushing his again as she trailed her fingers through his short sandy hair. “Really. Terrific idea. But have you considered…” She pressed a slow line of kisses along his jaw before finally meeting his mouth again in another long, exhilarating kiss that left them both breathless for a moment. She tried not to let her voice sigh as she finished her sentence. “Something like that?”

Clint attempted a serious face. “I think we should investigate both options,” he gravely informed her. “Thoroughly.” They toppled into the pile of cushions when he tugged her closer, and Natasha really didn’t mind at all.

** TWELVE **

Undoubtedly, the person most enjoying the parade was Thor. Pageantry and public display were _de rigueur_ as a member of any monarchy, and, as he pointed out, the Thanksgiving Day parade had the added benefit of brightly colored balloons floating along.

Thus Thor was the only one waving enthusiastically as their Stark Industries float glided down the crowd-filled streets. Natasha hated having her face on TV, so she was loitering as far in the shadows as she could with Clint, who generally shied away from noisy crowds. They were also avoiding eye contact with Sam, who was furiously itching from something they’d put in his suit the night before. Tony should have been enjoying himself more, considering how much he loved the spotlight, but he’d called the Today Show host an assclown on live television and was now receiving a lecture through Pepper’s forced smile.

Steve stood at the helm, as it were, waving occasionally to the bundled-up kids who’d wormed their ways to the front row. He supposed being on a float in the iconic parade was an exciting experience for everyone in their own right, but for Steve, this event sent trickles of familiarity through his bloodstream. He was, after all, the only one of them to have been at the original parade in 1924, only six years old and tugging at his beleaguered mother’s hand as the bands blared and the zoo animals pawed by. When the Felix the Cat balloon had debuted in 1927, he and Bucky had been in the front row, just barely young enough to be impressed by the black cat soaring above, by the collection of elaborate floats and costumed performers, by the million people surging forward to see what spectacle would next turn the corner. They’d gone together every year since they’d met, even through the Depression, even when Bucky’s ma said they were too old for children’s entertainment.

He wished Bucky was there with him, smirking at the entire extravaganza and just living this experience along with him, but Maria had posited that a man still wanted from crimes in every major country probably shouldn’t casually cruise down 42nd Street; Pepper had reluctantly agreed. Steve would have argued more, but Bucky had looked over at Dr. Foster and her assistant Darcy and said he wouldn’t mind watching with them and Bruce, who was technically still evading capture by General Ross. The look in his eyes suggested that he planned to spend the entire parade flirting with Darcy, and Steve was worried about the certain fallout coming when Bucky realized that they really didn’t have that much in common. _Maybe I should warn Dr. Foster…_

“Cap, stop frowning.” Maria’s voice buzzed through the comm earpiece they were all wearing in the event that Hydra or someone else was in the mood to wreck the holiday spirit. “You’re supposed to be enjoying yourself. And for fuck’s sake, Nat, stop _lurking_ \--” Steve pushed his mouth into the widest smile he could muster and tuned Maria out as she chastised each unenthusiastic team member in turn. It apparently mattered very much that, while on national television, they all not look like the antisocial loners they tended to be.

In truth, Steve wasn’t sure why a genuine smile was proving so elusive. It had been three weeks since they’d brought Bucky in, and (even counting the daily check-ins with Doctors Fitz and Simmons, even counting the few times Steve could hear quiet anguish seeping out from under his guest room door at 3 am, even though a terrifying cold still fell over Bucky’s features like a mask sometimes when they sparred) things were going well. Steve had introduced Bucky to the team gradually, inviting each person over for a few hours of casual conversation or a movie. Bruce and Bucky, two men with danger twined around their ribcages, bonded quickly, and Bucky seemed to have a surprisingly good time with Tony while the engineer and Dr. Fitz worked on improving his robotic arm. He and Natasha continued to have long Russian talks, which Steve was only above jealousy about because Bucky still came to him with shy eyes and halting questions about half-remembered fragments of Brooklyn and the war. The rest of the Tower had at least grown accustomed to the recovering assassin and no longer moved as if sudden bursts of action would have him yanking out a knife.

And it wasn’t that Bucky was struggling with the 21st century, either; if anything, he was almost overly enthusiastic about it. Steve had been hesitant in his first weeks in this new century, mistrustful of the Stark phone and flashing advertisements whose blue backlights screamed _Hydra weapon_ into his subconscious. Bucky, on the other hand, texted like he was born with a phone in his palm, seamlessly inserted himself into the yoga hour Bruce had continued to lead, and wholeheartedly embraced the entire wardrobe Pepper and Tony carted into Steve’s living room. Steve wanted Dr. Simmons to clear Bucky to leave the tower so they could go down to their old Brooklyn haunts or to visit Peggy; Bucky wanted to get cleared so he could try a Big Mac and go skydiving. The future had always fascinated Bucky--it had been his idea to go to that fateful Stark Expo--so Steve supposed he should have expected this. But he’d still hoped for more enthusiasm about the past.

At Herald Square they were all ushered off the float to sign autographs, and a little girl with tightly cornrowed hair shyly pushed a shield into Steve’s hands, reminding him that he was on the clock. “It’s for my best friend,” she lisped quietly when he asked for her name. “She’s home sick.”

Steve signalled to one of the float attendants to bring him an extra shield. He signed both and placed them gently in the girl’s mittened hands. “Take care of your friend, now,” he said with a small grin. “If she’s anything like _my_ best friend, she’ll be extra grumpy until she can get out of bed and play with you again.” He pulled his face into exaggerated annoyance until the girl giggled a little and moved down the line to Sam. The sun poked out of the clouds as the next shield-toting child approached, and Steve let himself enjoy the day, the experience, the cheerful Thanksgiving spirit that even Nat couldn’t keep off her face when a slew of girls ran up to her with replica gauntlets strapped around their wrists. _It’s a good day, and I have a lot to be thankful for._ He was determined to think of nothing else but that for the rest of the day.

This resolve lasted until a few hours later, when he and Bucky stood together in his kitchen peeling potatoes for the Thanksgiving dinner Tony was hosting that evening. Despite Pepper pointing out that the only thing he’d ever cooked was an omelette, Tony had decreed that this year’s dinner would _not_ only not be catered, but that he himself would be cooking the turkey. Steve and Bucky had drawn potato duty, no small feat considering that their party was fifteen and one of them was Thor. Peeling ten pounds of potatoes was a lengthy process even for two superpowered men, but they filled the spaces between the _schick_ of their knives with easy conversation bouncing back and forth just like Steve remembered.

“Tonight, after dinner, we should try another movie,” Steve suggested. “Something more interesting than _Breakfast at Tiffany’s._ ” That one had bored them both, but Steve had liked _Star Wars_ and he thought Bucky would, too.

“I actually…” Bucky’s knife strokes slowed as he seemed to gather the words he needed. “Darcy asked me if I wanted to have coffee with her afterwards, down in the cafe on the 18th floor. It’s just--I mean--I’m pretty sure she’s just being nice…”

Steve set his knife down and resisted the urge to rub his eyes. If he had looked over at his friend, he would have seen the smile creeping across his face, quiet and pleased and hopeful as it pulled his lips upward. He might have realized that this was a Bucky that was all new, with uncertainty filling the holes where swaggering confidence once resided. If he had looked, if he had listened, maybe he wouldn’t have said anything. But Steve didn’t look, because he was staring into middle distance trying to figure out how best to make Bucky understand what a bad idea this was.

“You shouldn’t lead her on like that,” Steve said finally in a low voice. “She’s a good kid, and she’ll be hurt when things end.”

Bucky’s knife slowed to a stop, and Steve’s basic instinct reminded him of that fight in the DC streets, of how quickly the assassin within his friend could a flip a dagger in his direction. After a moment of tight silence, Bucky said dully, “And of course it’s going to end, because I’m damaged goods, right?” He flipped the knife in his hand once, almost absently. “It could never work out.” It was a conversational statement, but there was a double edge to his tone, a sharp glittering danger hewn with intricate self-loathing.

 _“What?”_ Steve turned his head sharply with the force of his indignation. “I would _never_ \--Buck, you’ve got to know that there’s _nothing_ wrong with you. Not a damn thing.” He stared hard at his friend until the registered a barely perceptible nod, then let out the breath he hadn’t quite realized he was holding. Calmer, with a palpable feeling of relief that this hadn’t escalated into something worse, Steve went back to peeling. “All I meant was that, you know, we’re different. Not really a lot of people wandering around this century with experiences like ours.”

“So?” Bucky still hadn’t resumed working, but his hand had lowered the knife.

 _“So,”_ Steve said, trying not to sound overly pedantic, “While Darcy is nice, you don’t _really_ have anything in common with her, not at the core of things.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “I’m not trying to _marry_ the woman. It’s just a cup of coffee. I’m sure you’ve gone on plenty of dates with people you don’t have much in common with--how else are you supposed to find out what your shared interests are?”

Steve looked at his potato with extreme prejudice, slicing off tiny slivers of remaining skin. “That’s just what I mean, Buck. I don’t go on dates because it doesn’t matter if you both like to read or not. Nobody we meet is really going to understand our past, what we’ve been through, so what’s the point?”

“What’s the _point?_ ” Bucky laughed a little. “Well, for one thing, I haven’t gotten laid in about seventy years and I’d like to, you know, change that. And, c’mon, Steve, if you’re that selective then you’re never going to find someone.”

 _Why does everyone always_ \-- “I don’t need to find someone,” Steve said shortly, voice hardening. “I had someone, once, and that’s more than I deserved in the first place.” He swallowed the lump forming in his throat in spite of himself. “And I have you. That’s more important than any other relationship I could make, it’s more than enough--”

“You _really_ \--” Bucky looked at him in disbelief, the same way he always had when he’d come across Steve stubbornly fighting someone much bigger than him; but the expression quickly shifted to something more analytical, more like the Soldier surveying the battlefield. “No, I don’t need to ask that, do I?” he said, his sarcastic voice edging into something darker. “Of course you really think that. Captain America, searching for his _long lost friend_ so that they can be two men out of time together, so he’ll have a friend that misses the past just as much as he does. Steve Rogers, still so fucking stubborn that he’s going to cling to people and places that don’t even exist anymore.”

“But we…” Steve tried, looking down at the table and wondering why this conversation was happening now, on Thanksgiving, while a football game flashed across the television in the other room. “We can’t just abandon the past, turn our backs on who we are and where we came from.”

“Steve, that’s--” Bucky pushed a hand into his still-long hair. “That might be where we came from, yeah, but that’s not who we are anymore. You’re not that scrawny punk anymore, and sometimes you say something about who I was back then, and all I can think is _who the hell was Bucky?_ ”

His words brought the memory of DC, hot and shocking and smoky, whizzing through Steve’s vision so fast he saw white for a moment: the fight in the street, the masked assassin who moved too fast and whose eyes seemed too familiar until the muzzle was flipped off. “ _You’re_ Bucky,” he said when he could speak again. “You’re Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th, you like riding the Cyclone at Coney Island and dancing the jitterbug in Manhattan--”

“That’s not who I am!” Bucky nearly shouted, frustration flashing off metal. “This is _exactly_ what I mean, Steve. Look at my arm. _Look_ at it.” He pointed to his shining left arm, to the recently repainted red star. “I’m _not_ Bucky Barnes of the 107th anymore. Brooklyn and the warfront and the train are all just flat pictures in my mind. The only faces in my memory that produce any sort of emotion are yours and Natalia’s; I can’t remember the jokes you say Morita told or how it felt when we stole Dum-Dum’s hat. I can’t be this… this  _touchstone_ to your past when I don’t have the voices and smells and feelings that make those pictures come alive for you.”

There was a pause in which they looked at each other over their piles and piles of peeled potatoes; an almost comically bizarre setting for such a serious conversation. Steve had thought that this would be his greatest challenge today, but now it was apparent that the most challenging thing would be convincing Bucky that his emotional memories would return, that their shared history wasn’t broken.

“And you know, maybe I don’t want to be.” Bucky looked away, then back with resolve. “I _died,_ Steve, and then Zola made me into a murderer, pulled me around the world by my puppet strings. I didn’t have a choice with the Russians, with Hydra; but I do now, and I’m not going to waste it reaching for the past, _especially_ when I can barely remember it. We can’t bring back what we knew before, and I’m not going to try. I’m with you til the end of the line, pal, you know that; but I’m not going to live in the past with you.”

Bucky pushed away from the counter and stalked out the door, doing the best he could to slam it despite JARVIS’ protocols. Numb, Steve looked at the oven clock and realized that dinner was in just over an hour. “JARVIS, could you put on some music?” He picked up his knife and resumed his peeling as notes began to flow from the speakers. It was the same song that had spun on his record player the night Fury had died, and Steve pretended it didn’t want to make him lock himself in his room and cry.

[---]

Bucky returned thirty minutes later and they dressed for dinner in silence before hauling their dinner contribution to the Tower’s largest dining room. Fourteen hungry people bustling around disguised the fact that Steve was barely willing to carry a conversation for more than a minute. Normally Sam or Nat would have noticed and tried to draw him out, but Sam was swapping Air Force stories with Rhodey and Carol, and Nat seemed deeply invested in a conversation with Maria and Jane about the latter’s ongoing research. While Tony rolled out an enormous and only slightly singed turkey, Steve snagged a seat between Bruce and Clint, the two team members who were least likely to ask questions about why he was avoiding eye contact with Bucky (and Darcy, and Sam, and Natasha, and Maria…) He wasn’t hungry, but he made a point to keep his mouth full until dessert was over. “Headache,” he mumbled as he pushed away from the table. “Turkey makes me sleepy.”

But he wasn’t remotely tired, and wasn’t in the mood to stare at his ceiling until his eyes crossed. Instead, when Steve got into the elevator he rode down to the ground level and headed for the subway. He was only in the sweater Pepper had given him last Christmas, but he generated a ridiculous amount of heat and he really wasn’t as sensitive to the cold as people thought he should be. _You can’t be afraid of the ice when you don’t even remember it._ The train car was empty--most people were home with their families, celebrating their lives together--and Steve let the creaking wheels and rocking motion drown out any coherent thought his brain tried to produce.

His feet walked him off the Franklin Ave. stop and south a few blocks. Here, next to Prospect Park, Steve had spent more hours than he could count cheering for the Brooklyn Dodgers, grey cap flying off his small head. The space was now occupied by a towering tenement building, windows brightly lit as hundreds of families shared Thanksgiving on the site of many of Steve’s happiest memories. It could have given him a sense of peace and continuity, that happiness and joy continued to live at Ebbets Field even if the Dodgers didn’t. Maybe it would have if Bucky was standing there next to him, two men falling silent at the evidence of time past.

 _But Bucky isn’t here._ The streets were holiday quiet and Steve sank to sit on the curb, long legs stretching out in front of him as he leaned against a fire hydrant. He didn’t know how much time passed as he sat there on the cold sidewalk watching one light after another blink out as guests went home and families went to bed. _He’s not here, and even if he were, he wouldn’t feel the same way you do, because--because--_

“Steve?”

Steve pushed away from the fire hydrant as if propelled by the water it housed. He had perfect vision, and yet he squinted down the block as he scrambled to his feet, because there was no way in hell that Maria was really standing there shivering in her navy wool coat and thick grey scarf. Not now, three weeks after he’d sent their friendship back to polite conversation in the hallway and little more. There was no logical reason for her to lean against a streetlight, concern drawing her eyebrows together, and wait patiently for him to join her in the pool of light.

“What are you doing here?” Obviously she’d tracked his cell phone signal, but why? He stopped himself from reaching for her arm, from asking if she was cold. Those were things friends did, and they weren’t friends anymore. “Why aren’t you home, or at the Tower?”

Maria looked down the street, avoiding his gaze. “Nobody should be alone on Thanksgiving,” she said finally, a defensive hint to her tone. “I’ve had enough lonely ones to know that. You practically sprinted out of dinner, and I saw you were in Brooklyn and it was only a few stops past my place, so I figured--” She shrugged. “I live nearby. Come have a drink and then my conscience will be cleared.”

The voice in his head that sounded a lot like Bucky said, _when a beautiful woman invites you over, you always say yes._ Nothing sounded better at the moment than collapsing onto a warm couch and repairing their friendship across a few bottles of beer, but: “I can’t be that selfish,” Steve said honestly. “We’ve barely spoken in weeks. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” It was bad enough that she here checking on him instead of home or with friends; he couldn’t make it worse.

“I can handle myself,” Maria said dryly as she turned and headed for the subway station. “Hurry up, I’m freezing my ass off.” Her heels clicked down the sidewalk and Steve rushed to catch up.

Her nose was less pink by the time they stepped off the train at Borough Hall ten minutes later, and Steve didn’t mention the fact that she’d clearly gone much more out of her way to find him than she’d implied. In fact, he didn’t say much at all, because the post office across the street from the station was sharply familiar. “I used to live here,” he said at last, heedless of the fact that Maria had already started down the street.

“Steve?” She turned when she realized he wasn’t following, hair blowing out of place in the slight breeze. He felt bad: she was wearing a dress and her legs were surely cold, she was being so kind and he was glued to the sidewalk. It’s not like this was the first time he’d come to Brooklyn to see what had become of his home; he just hadn’t expected to come so close to it tonight, when he already felt raw and uncertain. “What happened?”

“I used to live near here,” he repeated, “at Court and State streets, three blocks south.” _I could walk there with my eyes closed._ It was cold as hell, though, and he could come back tomorrow in the sunlight.  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go before you turn into a popsicle.”

He wasn’t Natasha; he wasn’t very good at controlling what was or wasn’t painted across his face. Maria pursed her lips and thought for a moment about whatever she saw on his features, then deliberately looped her arm through his. “Let’s go,” she said gently. “It’s only a few blocks.” It was the kind of cold that pressed lips into silence, and besides, Steve couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t feel desperate, pathetic, moronic, or some combination of the three. Instead he nodded and led Maria down the street, dimly conscious of her hand resting on his elbow.

The original building was long gone, but in the new brick wall between what was now an eyeglasses store and a salad bar there was a commemorative plaque, the copper greened with age. “‘Former home of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes and Captain Steven Grant Rogers, also known as Captain America. Both were killed in action in 1945 in service to their country during World War II,’” Maria read aloud, then looked over at Steve. “I bet that feels weird.”

Steve shrugged. He normally told people that he got used to it, and he supposed that he had, but something about standing in the cold with her, running his fingers over his own name, made him turn to her and confess, “It’s more than weird. Sometimes it’s…” _Lonely,_ he thought, _but that would be rude._ “Just awful, really.”

Maria gave him a knowing smile. “And lonely?” she asked after a minute, squeezing his arm the tiniest bit in comfort he didn’t deserve. “Though I guess now that Bucky’s back it’s not so bad.” Her teeth started to chatter and Steve gently pulled her back down the street instead of admitting that yes, it was still bad, and somehow now he felt even more alone than before.

Eight blocks later, Steve was regretting every decision he’d made that evening. The cold had finally worked its way under his sweater; conversely, Maria (probably because she felt bad for him) had decided not to let a frosty demeanor wrap around her shoulders. She grinned when he pointed out all the alleys he’d once been punched in and agreed that it was a damn shame that his favorite soda shop was now yet another McDonald’s. He knew she was only being nice because of his obvious misery, he _knew_ it; but she glanced up at him for a second as she unlocked her front door and every memory of the time they’d shared over the past few months, every near-touch and almost-moment, tumbled out of the box he’d shoved them in.

“Maybe I should go home,” he mumbled, because as warm as her apartment was, he couldn’t let this happen again. Their friendship was best fixed in the light of day, in her impersonal office, where hard chairs and flat tables kept them from revealing too much of themselves. Now, at midnight, was when soft voices and dim lights yanked on that invisible string around his heart.

Maria leaned a hip against her unlocked door, exasperated. “ _Steve._ I’m not going to hit on you again. Just have a fucking drink.” And that wasn’t the issue, but she’d already pushed through the door and deliberately left it open behind her as she shed her coat and heels by a couch and moved around a corner to the kitchen. The open door was a dare, and everyone knew that Steve hadn’t turned down a dare since 1926, so he stepped over the threshold, removed his shoes, and shut the door.

There was an intimacy in being in her apartment that he wasn’t prepared for. It was one thing to have a weekend meeting at the coffee shop by the Tower, both dressed casually in jeans and smiling over lattes. It was another thing entirely to run a finger across the book spines in her staggering library, to find a framed photo of her mother tucked next to a worn Spanish copy of _The House of the Spirits,_ to realize that the hint of lavender that he often noticed in her wake came from the herbs growing in small jars on her windowsill. When she met him at the couch with a mug of hot chocolate that tasted like melted ice cream and smelled faintly of peppermint, her hair had been pulled out of its style and Steve had the greatest and worst urge to wind it around his fingers.

“Peppermint?” he asked instead, seating himself carefully on the sofa. He expected her to choose the opposite loveseat, but instead she slid onto the other end of his couch and tucked her bare feet under the skirt of her dark green dress. _Danger! Too close! Abort!_ There was no polite way to move to the other seat, so Steve resolved to drink this cocoa as fast as humanly possible and bolt before he again ruined everything.

“Schnapps,” she answered with sly smile. She sipped from her mug, and Steve thought he’d be out the door in no time at all; but then she conversationally asked, “So what did you and Barnes fight about?” and he almost choked.

“How did you--” he started to ask, but Maria raised her brows in that _I know every damn thing_ way she had and he thought better of it. He contemplated the mug in his hand instead: it was pink, polka dotted, and so wholly opposite of the Agent Hill that commanded Stark’s security that it was distracting, that “Do you think I’m stuck in the past?” jumped out of his mouth without his permission when he went to take a sip.

“No,” Maria said immediately, but then she paused and her brow wrinkled as she considered the question. “Maybe,” she conceded after a moment. “Sometimes. You’re not, you know, a complete grandpa. You don’t forward chain emails or have antiquated opinions about marriage, but…”

“But I’m too attached to what I knew before,” Steve finished bitterly. He looked down at his feet.

Maria quirked her lips. “It’s not that,” she said, reaching across the center of the couch to set a sympathetic hand on his. “The past is important: it informs who we are, the decisions we make and the places we choose to go. I don’t think anyone should forget where they came from, for a lot of reasons. And it makes sense that you’d want to hold on to what you knew when you lost consciousness in 1945 and woke up seventy years later as if it were the next day.”

“But?”

She sighed and set her mug down, but she didn’t move her hand from his. “But, I don’t know, Steve; letting our pasts define us is so… _safe,_ and limiting, and confining. There’s no room for growth, for trying new things or having new experiences or bettering ourselves. If we didn’t move forward, well, I’d still be nothing more than Senator Hill’s despised daughter. Nat would still be KGB. Stark would still make weapons.”

Steve dropped his head and placed his mug on the coffee table as he thought about what she’d said, disproportionately focused on flying to Chicago and beating her dad to a pulp. _Back on track, Rogers._ “Bucky doesn’t remember a lot of the things that I do,” he said quietly. “And that’s--that’s okay. _That_ I understand. But he doesn’t seem to want to try, either.” He wondered if his face fully reflected how lost he felt. “I don’t know what to do about that.”

Maria squeezed his hand and he looked up to meet her gaze. “Have you considered that the past might be a little more difficult for him than it is for you? I’m not saying that your time together in the war was all fun and games, but you know he’s carrying things even heavier than that. Why would he want to look back and go over the destruction he feels responsible for when he can move forward, make himself a person he wants to be and begin to redeem himself? Your past is cleaner than clean, shiny in a way that no one else’s is. It’s easy to forget that the rest of us have demons just over our shoulders.”

“Well…” Steve began, but he shut his mouth when he realized that he didn’t have a single argument that wouldn’t be utterly, terribly selfish. All along, all he’d wanted was for Bucky to be back in control of his life and body, for him to be alive and healthy and real. He didn’t know when that had tilted into wanting Bucky to be exactly as he’d been before the ice, when he’d let his desire for a friendly face out of the past begin to color their interactions. _When did you become such a self-centered asshole?_ He’d been wrong, so wrong, and shame stung like needles across his face. “Well, fuck.”

“Yeah,” Maria agreed without judgment. Her lips curved in an understanding smile, too understanding for what a complete jerk he’d been; not just to Bucky, but also to her. He’d held both of them up to his past for comparison, but at least when it came to Bucky there was a logical (if unfair, stupid, selfish, thoughtless) reason. His treatment of Maria went beyond unfair and well into cruel, because she wasn’t Peggy and he never should have made her feel like she needed to be. He’d never criticize Tony again, because he was honestly the biggest jackass living in the Tower.

_And if we’re being honest: you’ll love Peggy forever but she’ll be gone one day and you’ll still be alone. You left her and she carried on without you, founded SHIELD and met someone she could love and have a family with._

_And if we’re being honest: if Peggy knew you were still carrying her love around like a shield she’d be absolutely furious. She’d call you a bloody idiot and a coward. She’d sound a lot like Natasha, and she’d be right._

_And if we’re being honest: Maria is amazing and you want her in her own right and you never needed to compare her to Peggy to know that. Maria would go with you to Coney Island and the World War II Memorial if you asked her to, would show you new things and still let you remember the old. Maria is utterly gorgeous, is brilliant and hilarious and accepting, is miraculously kind, and you’re lucky she’s even speaking to you at all, and you should just reach for her now and--_

Her hand was still on his, and her smile was still tilting across her lips, and Steve _knew._ “Maria.” Her eyes widened in surprise as he curled his hand around hers and pulled her across the couch, across the gulf between them. She was so close now, face tipped up towards his, and their noses nearly touched when he began to ask, “Can I kiss you?” He thought she might refuse, but before _kiss_ was out of his mouth she had leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.

 _How do I do this again?_ But, oh, it was easy, running his fingers through her dark hair and wrapping an arm around her slim frame, losing himself in this moment he’d never allowed himself to want. He could taste the chocolate on her tongue and feel the soft contours of her body when she fit herself flush against him. He didn’t know which one of them deepened the kiss, but he knew that she was leaning backwards and he was being pulled along with her, that they were nearing the point when he was going to have to be a gentleman and slow this down, that he absolutely didn’t want to do anything of the sort.

And then everything came crashing down. “Steve,” she said against his lips, and it took him a moment to realize that her arms were between them, that her hands were on his chest and she was gently pushing him off her. “I can’t. We can’t.”

Mortified, Steve leapt away as if scalded. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I am _so sorry--_ ”

Maria pushed herself upright and moved as if to set her hand on his knee, then reconsidered. “It’s not--don’t think--” She bit her lip, rolled her shoulders, and started again. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Steve. I’m sorry.” She sighed heavily. “I just can’t do this. Not when you’re still in love with Peggy.”

“But I’m not…” _Can I honestly say that?_ He closed his mouth. He didn’t think he could.

“That’s what I thought,” she said with quiet weariness into the ensuing silence, looking crestfallen but not surprised. That was really what cut into his bones: the resignation that curled up her shoulders and cast a shadow across her vivid eyes. “You should probably go. It’s late.”

There was no point in arguing, because he couldn’t say the only thing she needed to hear. Steve silently moved around the couch to the door and roughly shoved his feet into his shoes. Maria didn’t move, didn’t turn her head to watch him go. It was only when he creaked open that she looked over her shoulder at him and said softly, with agony breaking her voice, “Get home safe, okay?”

Steve nodded sharply. “I’m sorry,” he said again, anguish choking him, before shutting the door and carefully treading down the stairs. The breeze outside had kicked into a wind that slapped at his face as he walked to the subway, but when he wiped tears from his eyes, he knew they had nothing to do with the cold.

**\---**

Before SHIELD had sent Clint to take her out, Natasha had made a name for herself on the criminal circuit by taking any job that paid high enough. For better or for worse, killing lecherous high ranking government officials with wandering eyes and roving hands was her specialty; but she’d picked up all kinds of other useful skills as she’d assassinated her way around the world. In Florence, a talented one-named blonde girl taught her how to steal art in broad daylight. She’d once spent her downtime in Manila learning all kinds of poker scams from an intense Javanese man with no thumbs. It was in New York, however, that Natasha had learned how to pick pockets, and although she didn’t do that outside of missions anymore, watching the Black Friday crowds rush past the tea shop window still made her palms itch.

“You know,” Melinda May said from across the small table, reeling Natasha’s thoughts away from the wallet protruding out of a nearby woman’s purse, “When Barton dumped you in my office eight years ago, I didn’t think it would lead to you becoming an Avenger.”

Natasha snorted a mirthless laugh. “I didn’t think it would lead anywhere but prison,” she replied. “Or death.”

She could still remember the day clearly, despite the permanent haze her fading brainwashing had thrown around her memory. Young and angry and oh so tired of being disappointed to wake up in the morning, she’d let the archer with eyes like the sea take her into custody. Her plan had been simple: convince SHIELD to fix the wiring in her brain so that she could become An Agent For Good; in the meantime, seduce the idiotically trusting Agent Barton until he loved her enough to give her the database access she needed to make herself vanish. It was a good plan, solidly within her wheelhouse, but Nick Fury had laughed at her perfectly prepared speech and merely told Clint to “take her to May” before reporting to his first in the series of many insubordination lectures.

 _It’s an adjustable plan,_ she’d told herself as Clint led her down a hall and explained that “May” was Melinda May, a recruit trainer and all-around, in his words, terrifying person. _Women are just a seduceable as men._ The Red Room had thrown their girls at targets regardless of gender: it was not only men who shared secrets in bed, and Natasha had always been an equal opportunity assassin. And as for the “terrifying” part, well: she barely remembered what fear felt like, and she wasn’t about to start doing so based on the assessment from a man who had let slip on their flight to SHIELD that he was afraid of frogs.

The Plan, however, did not work. It turned out that Agent May was meant to ask her questions about her time in the KGB, which Natasha either could or would not answer. As such, Melinda May ignored her the entire first week Natasha sat in her office, working steadily through report after report while Natasha tried every single conversation opener in the book and then some. Sometimes she’d get the tiniest sniff of laughter, or maybe, if she was being particularly obnoxious, an eye roll. Every day, she’d let Clint lead her from her holding cell to this office, where she’d use increasingly disruptive body language to attempt to get the stone-faced woman across the desk to just fucking _react:_ she put her feet on the desk, she burped the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets both, she spent an entire day throwing a very convincing temper tantrum.

Another week of this plodded by and Natasha was done. They hadn’t started the brainwashing repair and she was starting to doubt they ever would. _The KGB lies, SHIELD lies, everyone lies._ She was ready to go, one way or another, and the first thing she did once Clint was out of earshot was reach a leg out and kick at a vase painted with lotuses and filled with white peonies. The blue porcelain fell slowly, shattering in slow motion against the hard floor. “Those were from my husband,” Agent May had said quietly. She stood and silently stepped over the wreckage to pull Natasha out of her chair and down the mazes of halls. _This is the end._ She was so tired of this world; she was so glad this was done.

“Where are we--” Fury’s office was nowhere in sight: instead, they were in what looked like training halls.

Agent May closed the door, unlocked Natasha’s cuffs, and walked emotionlessly to the padded ring in the center of the room. “Let’s go.”

“Is this some kind of test?” Was she going to have to kill this office drone before Fury put her down? So be it. _I’m good at killing,_ she’d thought as she charged the older woman. _And I’m great at tests._

Natasha was good at murder, but she didn’t like it. Assassinations were cold, distant, impersonal; and while she tended to be, too, what she really _liked,_ once she’d been allowed to like things at all, was fighting. She liked the _whoosh_ when her opponent missed her completely, the _crack_ of her knuckles against ribs and her feet against shins. Killing was what kept her out of the grave, but fighting was what made her feel alive. Melinda May was more of a challenge that she’d expected, even in dress pants, and, as the exhilaration of being back in the ring swept through her, it became more and more difficult to remember what they were even fighting about. Three rounds later, Natasha finally whiffed on a right cross and was thumped to the mat.

“If we do this again tomorrow, will you stop being such a shit?” Melinda had asked as she offered a hand and helped her up. “You could have just talked, you know.”

Natasha had pushed thoughtfully at the bruise blooming on her jaw. “Talking’s no fun,” she said lightly; but because this was the first time in months that she’d felt fire in her veins, she challenged, “But if you drop me three times tomorrow I might have something to say.”

To this day, May had never dropped her three times in one fight: she still ended each sparring session with a casual threat that next time it would _definitely_ happen. It didn’t really matter: that first fight had created a mutual respect between the two women that had, over time, grown into a genuine friendship. Melinda taught Natasha how to channel and control the emotions that sprang like flowers from her repairing synapses; Natasha showed her how to perform her signature thigh grab. Melinda gave instruction on the glory of intra-office gossip and Natasha demonstrated her much-guarded ability to knit. Whispers had snaked through the office about Bahrain until Natasha had drawn a few knives and scowled, and Melinda had never mentioned that the slightly lopsided cake she’d found on her new desk in the Processing Department was completely raw in the center. It had not been uncommon, even after she was cleared for active duty with the STRIKE team, to find the young Russian trailing after the unflappable agent like (as Clint had once put it) a stoic baby duck.

In the present, Natasha’s phone blipped and she flipped it over to read a text from Steve: _I fucked up._ This could relate to pretty much anything besides a mission, so she just shot back _again?_ and looked back at May. “Anyway. Bucky says you’ll be packing up tomorrow. Hydra base to take out?”

May raised an eyebrow and looked out the window. “Nah. Phil’s got us chasing something crazy down in the Caribbean.” She usually channeled all her emotions and fears into movement, mostly at ungodly hours of the morning that Natasha did not miss; it was unlike the woman to allow waves of apprehension to ripple across her dark brown eyes. Sometimes Natasha was permitted to ask and sometimes she wasn’t, and she was considering where along that line this conversation fell when May put down her cup and said, “Fury should have told you and Barton. You both had clearance. I’m sorry I was sworn to secrecy.”

Melinda May never apologized, not for stealing prime seats at briefings or for completely devastating Sitwell at hand-to-hand sessions. Natasha weighed this knowledge carefully as she considered what to say. _I forgave Phil the morning after he left,_ she thought. _If we had protected him better in the first place this never would have happened. I forgave Maria because she was just following orders, and because if I didn’t then I couldn’t forgive you, either._ She settled instead on, “Clint was still leveling out, and Fury… Well, its not like I’m the most trustworthy person around.”

“Don’t undersell yourself, Romanoff.” The sharp glint in her eyes was straight out of their early training sessions, not in fighting styles but in meditation: _You decide your value now, Natasha. You’re in charge of who you want to be. You’re not a pawn but a person; not a weapon but a woman._ Sometimes, like when she went off the grid for three weeks before moving into the Tower, Natasha would take those words out and wrap them tight around her, blocking out the entire rest of the world until she remembered who she’d chosen to be and why. Now she pulled them out again and added a vindictive _so fuck you, Nick, and your stupid eyepatch_ to the end. Melinda nodded slightly, as if she knew exactly what Natasha was thinking, but only said, as if asking about the weather, “So. You going to tell me about Barton?”

Natasha rolled her an incredulous look. “Are _you_ going to tell me about Phil?” Because Melinda could be so expressionless, few people knew that she was an incurable gossip. The fact that she wasn’t immediately giving forth a hushed tale of whatever Phil had gotten himself into was telling enough, as was the way her gaze flickered with worry. It was so tempting to press for more information, because Melinda had vowed never to return to the field after Bahrain and yet something about Phil had pulled her back in; but in exchange she’d have to spill about Clint, and she wasn’t ready yet. Plus, Melinda and Phil were each so parental in their own way that Natasha imagined that finding out they were together would be similar to the average teenager realizing that their parents were still sexually active.

Instead, she chuckled a little and said, “Didn’t think so. Tell me about your team,” and listened as Melinda explained the fascinatingly complex romantic tension between the tiny doctors she referred to as “Fitzsimmons” and confirmed that Antoine Triplett was even more attractive than the rumor mill had claimed. She was in the middle of a story about the hacker she was training when Natasha’s phone blipped again, this time with a message from Maria.

 _Kissed Steve. Everything is terrible. Why don’t you have any scotch in your apartment?_ “Jesus fucking Christ,” Natasha said aloud, dropping her face into her hands. She needed to have a word with JARVIS about letting people into her place. “I have to go,” she groaned as she downed the rest of her tea and got slowly to her feet.

Melinda raised an eyebrow, instantly alert. “Trouble?”

Natasha scowled. “Just team drama, and _no,_ ” she said, pointing into May’s curious face as they stepped out into the cold street, “I’m not telling you.” And to the agent’s credit, she didn’t ask, not even when Natasha stopped at a bodega and bought a humongous bottle of Johnnie Walker Red.

[---]

It was an enormous privilege to be friends with some of the most interesting people in the world, and Natasha was thankful for her team every day. That being said, after a week of juggling Maria and Steve’s palpable awkwardness, Natasha was ready to lock them both in one of Bruce’s Hulk containment chambers and eject them into space.

“Tonight Maria and I are going with Thor to make fun of that new movie about vikings,” she told Sam as they walked towards the landing pad where Tony was unveiling the new jet he and Sam had designed with Rhodey and Carol’s consultation. “You should come.”

“Can’t,” Sam sighed. “Steve, Clint, and I are taking Bucky to an all-you-can-eat buffet. He doesn’t believe they exist.”

“Well why don’t we just do both--” Natasha broke off with a sigh of her own as Sam slowly shook his head. “Right. I forgot that we work with teenagers.” She had tried pointing out to Maria that Steve had the biggest heart in the world, and that still loving Peggy wasn’t the same as still being _in love_ with Peggy. None of that had stopped Maria from taping a copy of one of Steve’s old USO posters over her target sheet at the shooting range before emptying her entire magazine into it. She hadn’t had any luck with Steve, either. Maybe the middle of the sparring ring wasn’t the best place to convince him to fix things, but he’d ignored all her non-violent attempts to hang out. According to Bucky, Steve hadn’t been doing much more than moping, sighing deeply, and jumping out of sight whenever Maria turned corners. Clint reported that Steve had logged an “unhealthy” number of hours playing Super Smash Brothers in the past week, and coming from Clint, that was saying something.

Sam pushed open the glass doors that led onto the flight deck where Tony was hosting the big jet reveal. Early December was a terrible time for an outdoor event like this: the wind whirled and pushed at the group of people huddling into turned-up collars for warmth. Amidst the cluster of R&D mechanics and various lab-coated techs, Natasha could pick out Steve’s head and shoulders hunched pointedly away from where Maria and Clint stood muttering darkly about the cold. Every ten seconds or so either Steve or Maria would peek a forlorn look at the other before turning away again. Sam rolled his head as well as his eyes towards Natasha and she was grateful that the wind whipped away her groan. _This is never going to end, and I’m going to have to divide my time between them, and when the Dog Cops movie comes out I’m going to have to see it with each of them as well as with Clint, and I barely even want to see it once._ Together they pushed through the crowd to stand near Bruce and Thor and wait for whatever pageantry Tony had in store for them today.

Maybe Pepper had instructed Tony to keep the display short for the sake of the audience standing in the brisk December wind; maybe he’d finally realized that they all didn’t have a layer of steel alloy armor shielding them from the cold. Either way, the aerial dips, loops, and dives were kept to a (relative) minimum before the sleek new jet touched down to the tarmac strip that extended out of the Tower. Tony jumped out of the cockpit with a flourish and blathered for a bit in his usual way before introducing Carol, Rhodey, and Sam as his Air Force consultants and an entire troupe of mechanics that actually built the thing. After he’d smashed a champagne bottle over the red nose of the aircraft, most of the crowd gathered closer to inspect the newest Stark-manufactured vehicle. Natasha and Bruce were amongst the ones who hung back.

“Not going to check out the new hardware, doc?” Natasha asked absently as Tony made a joke about Maverick and Goose and Clint turned in the mob of people to flash her a quick private grin that made her insides feel ridiculously melty. She was pretty sure that this directly related to the fact that they’d spent the previous evening making out through a viewing of _Top Gun,_ and that was enough for her to beam back at him.

Bruce snorted. “You forget that Tony and I share some lab space,” he said drily. “I’ve been hearing about this goddamn jet for months, and it’s enough to make me… well, you know.” They’d been teammates for months now and were approaching a comfortable level of friendship, but Natasha still considered it a small victory each time she was able to suppress the impulse to shudder when he talked about hulking out in casual conversation. “Besides,” he continued, “If I go over there I’ll eventually have to talk to either Cap or Agent Hill, and then the other one will stare at me in some sort of betrayal.”

Natasha sighed heavily. If Bruce, who spent the majority of his time buried in his lab, had noticed the tension between the two, then the situation truly was dire. “I don’t know what to do, Bruce,” she admitted as she watched Steve glare in the direction of the conversation Maria was having with Bucky. “I didn’t know it was humanly possible to be this stubborn.”

“Well, he _is_ superhuman,” Bruce pointed out. Natasha rolled her eyes in exasperation and he shrugged. “What? I don’t have any suggestions. Interpersonal relationships are _not_ my forte. Send ‘em to therapy, I don’t know, couples counseling; sign them up for one of those partner reality shows. Hell, just start a game of seven minutes in heaven--”

“You’re a genius, Bruce,” Natasha informed him, pushing through the crowd to Clint before she could hear the doctor agree that yes, he certifiably was. She conferred with Clint for a few moments in the relative secrecy of the cockpit before sliding into the crowd to mingle while he went off to make some calls. The rest of the afternoon was spent interpreting aerospace engineering jargon, and the evening brought a viewing the least historically accurate viking movie she’d yet to witness. Upon returning to the Tower, she made her excuses to Thor and Maria before practically running to Sam’s apartment.

Inside, Sam, Bucky, and Clint lay sprawled across the living room in various stages of food comas. “Nat,” Bucky half-called, half-groaned from his face down position on the rug. “Nat, why didn’t you tell me that serum they gave us does _not_ make us immune to the effects of buffet food? You should have _warned_ me!”

“Like you would have believed me,” she snorted, stepping over his head to reach the couch where Clint was nearly snoring. She lifted his legs and plopped onto the couch, lowering his limbs across her lap like a seatbelt. “The entire world knows that buffet food is disgusting and yet everyone goes anyway.” She looked over Sam, who looked to be in the best shape. “What was the damage?”

Sam laughed. “All four of us, or just Tweedlee and Tweedledum?”

From the floor behind him, Bucky mumbled, “I can still take you, hummingbird.”

“Like to see you try,” Sam shot back. They all lay around for a few minutes, settling deeper into the couches (or, in Bucky’s case, the rug) and talking about nothing in particular, until Sam finally spoke up again. “So you’ve got a plan?”

Natasha flicked a glance at Clint and she lifted her hands to quickly sign, _Last chance to say no._ The corner of his mouth lifted as he signed back: _Why would I say no? It’s time you saw the place where I grew up, anyway._  She nodded, filing the significance of his rationale away for later, and turned back to Sam. “We’re going to Clint’s farm. For Christmas, maybe, since everyone’s going to be in town, anyway.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “What is there to do on Clint’s farm?”

Clint pushed himself into a seated position, swinging his legs off Natasha’s lap. “Absolutely nothing,” he declared. “No wifi, no TV, barely any cell service, and in the middle of nowhere to boot. It’ll be a team retreat: they’ll _have_ to talk to each other.”

Bucky lifted his head. “Team retreat? Are we going to have to do some of that bullshit twenty-first century team building crap?”

“Think about it this way, man,” Sam said reasonably. “Team building bullshit leads to Steve and Maria having a civil conversation, which leads to them making up--”

“And making _out!_ ”

“--Shut up, Barton. Which leads to them making up, which leads to you not having to worry about his dumb ass anymore. Well,” he amended, “no more than usual.”

Bucky rolled over on the floor, grumbling, “You know, in my day, we didn’t need _team building exercises_ ; you either worked together or you were full of shrapnel, and that was that.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Okay, _grandpa,_ ” she retorted as she got to her feet and pulled Clint with her. “But it’s team building or watching them do the square dance of awkward until one of us kills them.”

“It’ll probably be you, Barnes,” Clint added helpfully, nudging Bucky’s leg as the two of them made their way to the door. “Don’t worry. The farm is huge: if you kill ‘em, there’s plenty of room to hide the bodies.” They could hear Bucky laughing as they walked down the hall.

“I meant it, you know,” Clint said quietly as they loitered outside his door a few flights of stairs later, leaning against opposite sides of the doorjamb for the sake of the security camera. “I’ve seen where you grew up; it’s only fair that you see where I did.”

A year into their partnership, their burgeoning friendship merely six months old, they’d been sent to Stalingrad to investigate a rumor that the Red Room was resurfacing from the rubble of the Cold War. It had been her first time returning to Russia since she’d become a SHIELD agent. The surveillance detail had quickly shifted to a direct approach, to Natasha leading Clint through familiar hallways with a murky feeling roiling through her gut. They were too late: she could feel it in the air as soon as they entered, but there was an irrepressible urge to move through the labyrinth and run her hands over the abandoned trays of syringes and scalpels. Nothing had changed. There were still claw marks where small hands had resisted being dragged to the chairs; the filthy iron beds still had rusty sets of handcuffs linked to the headboard.

She knew the Red Room’s methods, and had moved unerringly to the smallest ballet studio to find, as she expected, the peacefully arranged bodies of the girls that had been too young to move when the KGB had given the order to evacuate. Some of their eyes had still been open, lifeless expressions of confusion frozen across faces too young to know terror, and Natasha had walked carefully around the room, gently closing their eyes. Clint had looked at her with unprecedented horror, and before he could ask she’d inexpressively signed _This is where I came from_ before pulling out her radio and calling for a clean up team. It was only once they were on a quinjet heading back to base that the murkiness forced its way out of her, and Clint had held her hair out of the way as she hugged the toilet and cried all the way home.

Now she looked at him across their precisely measured distance. “That’s not the same thing,” she said softly. The Red Room wasn’t where she’d grown up; it was where she’d been made. There were no memories there that she’d ever intended to share.

Clint didn’t smile, didn’t frown, didn’t do anything other than look at her with kind blue-grey eyes. “Then we’ll just say it’s because I want you to come,” he said at last, finally letting the corners of his mouth curve the tiniest bit as he looked at his feet. “I--I really do. I was going to ask you along the next time I went. It’s… I mean, it’s just Iowa, but it’s beautiful in the snow, and it’s home. I want you to see it.”

Natasha reached across the gap between them and took his hand, security cameras be damned. “I’m looking forward to it,” she promised with a crooked smile, and when Clint smiled back it was as if the sun has climbed back into the nighttime sky just for the two of them. _I love when you smile like that,_ she almost said as he unlocked the door and invited her inside. _Like the sun rises and sets just for us._ But that was much too close to _l love you,_ eight letters she didn’t know how to string together and push off her tongue; so instead she followed him in, shut the door, and settled herself into his arms for another movie that they definitely weren’t going to finish.

**THIRTEEN**

“Easy” wasn’t ever the right word to describe an apology, but Steve and Bucky’s apologies had always followed the same dance pattern, and Steve still knew the steps even if Bucky didn’t. The morning after Thanksgiving, he sat at the kitchen table and waited with a pot of coffee until Bucky tripped out of his room with a bleary glare in the direction of the sunshine pooling under the windows. “I’m sorry,” Steve said to his oldest friend. “You were right about everything. I’ve been a huge jerk.”

 _Now’s when you would say, “Damn straight” or “You’re always a jerk,”_ Steve thought as he prodded at the handle of his coffee mug, rotating the cup with small pokes. _Now’s when you’d call me a goddamn punk and punch me in the shoulder, and then we’d go down to Hattie’s bar and have a drink._

But that was then, and now Bucky shrugged, sipped his coffee, and told him, “Don’t beat yourself up about it. I understand.” He pushed his hair off his face, revealing the faintest trace of a smile. “It can’t have been easy to have been alone like that. Though I bet there was a line of ladies all the way from Brooklyn to Harlem wanting to help with that problem.”

Steve blew out a laugh and leaned back in his chair, watching the ceiling fan slowly oscillate. “Naturally,” he lied, recognizing that it was not the time to share that there’d been no line at all, no welcoming committee or “How to Live in the Future” handbook; just a soundstage of the city, then an isolated cabin he filled with his grief, and then aliens cascading from a hole in the sky. Instead, he sat back up and looked Bucky in the eye. “Speaking of ladies, how was your date?”

Bucky’s face split into a wide smile, which he quickly tried to shrink. “It was good,” he said with an attempt at a casual voice, though his smile suggested that it had been better than that. “Modern coffee sizes are stupid, but Darcy is… interesting.” He wrinkled his nose, as if that wasn’t quite the word he’d meant to say; but before Steve could ask annoying questions and respond the way he was supposed to when his best friend went on a date, a new light had entered Bucky’s eyes and he asked, “And where did _you_ run off to last night after dinner? You weren’t here when I got back.”

“Out,” Steve said flatly, feeling his good mood plummet and splatter into his stomach. “Brooklyn.” For a few short minutes, he’d forgotten the previous night and how close he’d come to fixing things with Maria before shattering their relationship, likely beyond all possibility of repair. Questions were forming on Bucky’s face, and he just… he couldn’t rehash it, couldn’t tell Bucky how he’d gone from wholly euphoric to not just shooting himself in the foot, but basically shooting his entire foot off. “I’ve gotta go,” he said abruptly, shoving his chair back and grabbing his coat and sketchbook. _He can just ask Nat,_ Steve reasoned as he fled the Tower and sought refuge in the silent rooms of the New York Public Library. _Maria has surely filled her in by now._

By dinner time, indeed, it seemed that the entire team had heard some slice of the story. Natasha, Bucky, and Sam seemed hellbent on getting him to talk to one of them, so instead he hid in Clint’s apartment and played Super Smash Brothers with him until his fingers numbed. Clint only asked once if Steve wanted to talk, and when he’d warily said no, the archer had only said “Let me know if you do” before turning on the game console and systematically destroying every character Steve tried to fight him with. This became a pattern: Steve would wake up, dodge Bucky’s attempts to begin any conversation relating to his love life, ignore the advice or admonishments Natasha and Sam (and, once, Thor) peppered throughout their sparring practice, then slip away to sketch people in the library or log more hours fighting tiny pixelated people in the relative safety of Clint’s apartment. Clint would come back late, often wiping lipstick off his face with a sheepish smile, and Steve would silently slide over on the couch and hand him another controller.

“Christmas,” Clint announced five days before the holiday in question. He settled himself into the spot on the couch Steve had made for him and smiled expectantly. “We’re going to my farm in Iowa. Nat and I are leaving a couple days early to get everything set up, and everyone else is driving up the day before.”

Steve looked at Clint with distrust. The man was deceptively good at lying. “We’re driving? And who exactly is ‘everyone else?’”

Clint grinned. “You mean, is Maria coming? Nah. She’s stuck spending it with her old man.” It was frankly embarrassing how strong the wave of relief that washed over him was. _Captain America should not be afraid of anything, especially not spending time with coworkers. Even ones who he utterly failed at romancing._ “As for the driving,” Clint continued, oblivious to Steve’s thoughts, “Nat and I are taking the jet so we can get enough supplies out there to feed you jocks, and Tony is having one of his ‘billionaire who wants to do as the commoners do’ fits. Hopefully you won’t be in his car.” Clint had a teasing grin on his face, so Steve cleared his throat, asked how many days he needed to pack for, and started looking forward to spending some time out of the city figuring out what to do about everything. _A few days on a farm with my favorite people will make everything better; it has to. And maybe I’ll even come back knowing how to fix things._

On Sunday afternoon, Nat and Clint flew off in the jet stuffed with enough food to feed an army. Steve thought he was the only one to witness the way Clint’s hand came to rest familiarly at the curve of Natasha’s waist as the cargo door closed behind them. _Good for them. At least_ they _have their shit together._ Sidestepping neatly to avoid crossing paths with Maria and Pepper, he went back to his apartment, played video games with Bucky and Sam for the rest of the night, and set his alarm for the 8 am departure. Monday morning dawned bright and he sprang out of bed feeling lighter than he had in a month. Bucky appeared to have gone down to the garage early, so Steve filled a travel mug with coffee, grabbed his packed bag and warmest jacket, and whistled as the elevator descended. He’d never actually been on a road trip before, and Sam had said he was going to make a few mix CDs for the sixteen hour drive, and--

Steve skidded to a stop just outside the elevator doors. The garage was not, as he’d expected, filled with his teammates and their piles of luggage. Tony and Thor weren’t arguing about the best way to evenly distribute weight across cars, and Darcy and Sam weren’t whining about how early it was, because the garage was empty save for a single navy SUV with a manila envelope tucked under a windshield wiper. Crossing the empty space, Steve ripped open the envelope and found a CD and a note that read, in Bucky’s traitorous chickenscratch:

_Sorry, guys, but we left at 4 am. Sam made you a ‘Stop Acting Like Children’ mix. I hope it’s sixteen hours long, or else you’ll have a lot of silence to fill… Love, Bucky._

Steve stared at the note in one hand and the CD in the other. _They wouldn’t…_ The sinking feeling in his stomach was confirmed when the door from the lobby squeaked open and Maria strode in wearing a faded West Point sweatshirt, carrying a steaming paper cup of coffee and dragging a a duffel behind her. She froze when she saw him, then drew closer, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“Natasha told me you were spending Christmas in DC,” she said, accusation layering her voice. They hadn’t spoke since Thanksgiving; hell, they’d barely even seen each other. Steve had quickly taken to diving into closets and empty conference rooms when he heard her approaching, lest someone see them cross paths and attempt to play mediator. (At least, that’s what he had told himself. It had nothing to do, at all, with the fact that seeing him made her steps falter and her eyes fade.)

Steve thrust the note out to her. “Clint told me you were going to be in Chicago,” he said as she read and swore loudly. “It seems we’ve been played.”

“Fuckers,” she muttered, crumpling the note in her hand. She looked away, brows drawn together in thought, and Steve wished for about the thousandth time that he could ask her to sit for him: the angles of her face were an artist’s dream. _Not that this is the time to be thinking about her face or her angles or her anything else,_ he told himself. _This car ride is going to be awkward enough._ She finally turned back to him, a hostile expression on her face. “Fine,” she said shortly. “They obviously think we can’t do this, and you know how much I enjoy proving people wrong.” In one swift motion, she threw open the trunk of the SUV and flung their bags in. “You want first shift?”

Steve took it so that he’d have something to do with his hands, and something to look at other than the flat crackle of anger that simmered under her skin. He figured that the morning traffic would take enough time that she’d fall asleep, and by the time she woke up they’d be in Pennsylvania and he’d know what to say to diffuse the tension; but cars seems to miraculously part ways for them, and they were through the Lincoln Tunnel and on the less congested New Jersey highway roads in no time, and she was still glaring hard out her window.

“So, um, music?” Steve asked into the frosted quiet. When Maria didn’t answer, he clicked open the CD case from Sam with one hand and fumbled the disc into the slot in the dashboard. There was a moment of whirring before the car was filled with the opening lyrics to a song Steve recognized from a Marvin Gaye album Sam had lent him before. It had a catchy beginning, with three distinct guitar notes, and it was only when Maria slapped the pause button and shouted, “Oh, my _god,_ ” that he remembered the song’s title: “Let’s Get It On.” Maria hunted for the eject button, but when she pushed it, JARVIS’ voice filled the interior of the car.

“I’m sorry,” the AI said, sounding truly apologetic, “But Mr. Stark has programmed this stereo system with specific parameters. Once this CD has been inserted it cannot be removed without an override code. I am required to resume playback in twenty seconds.”

Steve and Maria looked directly at each other for the first time all morning, eyes widened in matching horror. “What else is on the CD?” he asked slowly, and JARVIS began to list over an hour’s worth of bubblegum love songs by cheesy boy bands, Barry White and Al Green hits that Steve didn’t recognize but figured from Maria’s pained expression were similar to the CD’s first track, and, inexplicably, a few ABBA selections. At the end of the recitation, JARVIS resumed play, and from the speakers again flowed Marvin Gaye’s velvety smooth voice.

 _This is bad._ “It’s not that bad,” Steve tried to assure Maria when she put her face in her hands and made some highly distressed noises. “Here--we can turn the volume down and we can just talk over it.” It was somehow even weirder to have the song barely audible, but Steve could ignore any number of things when he wanted to.

“But I don’t _want_ to talk to you,” Maria groaned, face still in her hands. “I don’t want to be in this _car_ with you; I don’t want to spend a weekend on an isolated farm with you, and--oh, _don’t_ look at me like that.”

Hurt radiated through him at her words landed on his skin. He obviously knew he wasn’t anywhere on her list of favorite people, but he’d thought (hoped) that now, nearly two months after he’d first opened this rift in their friendship, she might have been more willing to reconcile in some fashion. _Of course, if I hadn’t screwed it up in the first place…_ “I’m sorry,” he muttered, trying not to look at the abject misery on her face. “I didn’t realize that you still hated me that much.”

Maria lifted her head from her hands and thumped it against her headrest. “I _don’t_ \--” she started to growl, before inhaling deeply through her nose and restarting tersely, “I don’t hate you, Steve, okay? That’s the problem.” He looked over at her, startled by this confession, and nearly drove them off the road when her wistful blue gaze met his. This at least elicited the shadow of a smirk from her closed off face, and she sighed before turning back to the trees whizzing past her window. “Can we just drop it? Permanently?”

 _By “it” do you mean this conversation, or our entire relationship?_ Steve wondered, but he was fairly certain that hour one of sixteen was not the time to start any kind of argument, so he assented with a single shouldered shrug and directed his eyes back to the road ahead of them. Maria pulled a novel from her bag and read while he drove, and when they switched places, Steve grabbed his sketchbook out of the trunk so he could draw the increasingly flat landscape they passed through. They reached a sort of equilibrium by lunch time, bolstered by the fact that, while Steve ordered them burgers at a Pennsylvania rest stop, Maria called Tony and threatened him with long-lasting bodily harm if he didn’t cough up the override code.

The flat Midwest unrolled before them as they took off for the afternoon, no longer serenaded by Sam’s awful CD. Maria seemed more willing to talk, at least about sports and TV and missions if not about the two of them, and Steve was coming to the terrible realization that he missed her. He missed how she bit her lip in an attempt not to smile when he cracked an atrocious joke. He missed the hilariously embellished stories she’d make up based on their horoscopes in the newspaper. He missed the late nights they’d spent planning Bucky’s capture, the way her hair had swept across her shoulders and her eyes had sparkled in challenge when they’d race to find the information they needed. It was unbelievable that it had been six weeks since the masquerade, when everything crumbled and fell, and _I miss you_ thundered so loudly in his head that for a second he feared he had said it aloud.

He hadn’t, though, and she looked at his panicked face a bit strangely before turning her eyes back to the road. Blustery winter clouds hung dark and low over the frankly boring scenery of northern Indiana, and there was a burning refuse smell emanating from one of the industrial towns they drove through that made Steve start to understand why so many people emigrated from the Midwest to the better-smelling coasts. The sun was rapidly setting, as was tended to happen in the short days of winter, and judging from the way Maria shifted every few minutes in the driver’s seat, she was getting antsy.

Steve consulted the GPS embedded in the center console after Maria squirmed again. They had five hours left to Iowa and he honestly wasn’t sure either of them wanted to be in the car that much longer. “Should we find somewhere to stop?” he asked tentatively. “Sam hasn’t answered my texts about what they’re doing, but they’re at least four hours ahead of us.”

“The others are staying in Waterloo,” JARVIS helpfully replied. “Thirty minutes south of the Barton farm.”

Maria blew out a short laugh. “Yeah. I can’t imagine Clint and Nat want company tonight.” Steve privately agreed, but he didn’t know if Natasha had filled Maria in or if she was just speculating, so he said nothing. Maria drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, lips pursed and twisting in thought. With a frown bunching her forehead, she asked the AI, “How far are we from Chicago?”

“One hour, Agent Hill.” This resulted in another frown, a prolonged sigh, and then Maria rattled off an address for JARVIS to navigate them to. Her foot seemed heavier on the accelerator and a distinct cloud hung over her head as they neared the city, towers ablaze with lights against the night. Steve read the stony apprehension on her face and thought it better not to ask, even when they detoured around the city and into the suburbs. They roared down tree-lined streets that turned into shady, well-kept avenues; the cars they passed slowly upgraded from Hondas and Fords to Mercedes and Bentleys.

“Where are we going--” Steve broke off his question as Maria steered the SUV off the road and up to a gated home. He knew it had been a trying and frustrating day, but the white-knuckled grip she had on the steering wheel was new, as was the tight line of her mouth. Ignoring him, she rolled down the window and punched a code into the gate box. She continued to stare resolutely ahead as the steel gate creaked open and they rolled up the pale gravel driveway to an impressively large red brick mansion built in the style of classical revival. It was only when she’d brought the car to a sudden, jerky stop in front of the covered entryway that she turned to face him, eyes shadowed.

“Welcome to Casa de Hill,” she said, a sardonic smile glinting in the dark. Before Steve could say anything, she’d pushed out of the car and started for the front door, where he could see another electronic keypad flashing. He followed slowly, stopping by the trunk to grab their bags. From the few hints Maria had dropped over time, he knew that she came from money. Ordinary American children, he had gathered, didn’t participate in expensive etiquette balls or own ponies from a young age. Her apartment had certainly seemed luxurious. All the same, there was a difference between “my family has money” and “my family’s wealth rivals that of Tony Stark,” and he’d had no idea that Maria fell into the second category.

“Wait,” he called, jogging up to the door, “Maria, _wait._ ” She turned around in the foyer and crossed her arms, head tipped to the side in anticipation of an onslaught of questions.

“Yes, I grew up here,” she said in monotone when he just stared at her, turning to stomp through a maze of sitting rooms that didn’t seem to ever have been sat in. “Yes, we have horses and, yes, my first pony’s name was Buttercup. Yes, we are super rich, and no, I don’t tell anyone about it, because then they look at me exactly like you’re looking at me right now.” They had reached the kitchen, somehow, and she mimicked his slack-jawed expression until he snapped his mouth shut.

Steve didn’t really care about all that stuff. Well, okay, he _did,_ in an abstract way, but his real concern was: “Is this where your father lives?”

Maria stuck her head in the fridge for two bottles of water, one of which she tossed to him before leaning against the gold-veined marble countertops. Her mouth curled in distaste. “Normally, yes, but I believe right now he’s on his way to the Caribbean to sleaze on whatever girl he’s taken along. Merry Christmas, right?” She seemed to be waiting for a barrage of questions, or maybe an outraged lecture about the fact that she hadn’t been completely forthcoming about where they were staying, and when none of that came, she looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and surprise. “Really? No questions?”

Steve shrugged. “Seeing this place doesn’t change any of my opinions about you.” It really didn’t. He would have said that it didn’t change how he felt about her, but he sensed that would put them back on the wrong foot.  “I wouldn’t mind a tour, though,” he added when she still looked at him skeptically. “Please?”

Maria raised an eyebrow and pushed off the counter. “One tour, coming right up.” She led him back through the maze of rooms on the first floor, pointing out places where she’d once bumped her forehead or ripped the curtains. Steve supposed it was difficult to remain private in one’s own childhood home, but he was still fascinated by the outpouring of personal stories that colored in the vague lines he’d been working off of. Her childhood sounded lonely: the parental figure in most of the stories was Lupe the nanny instead of her father, and mentions of any friends were rare. Either these facts didn’t bother her anymore or she’d long ago repressed the corresponding emotions, because she’d just smile with one side of her mouth and move on to the next room.

They left their bags in the foyer and climbed the sweeping circular staircase to the second floor. Most of the rooms were guestrooms covered in dust cloths, but there was a large stately library that had clearly inspired the wall of books in her Brooklyn apartment. “I spent a lot of time in there,” she admitted as she shut the door and moved down the hall. “And if not there…” Her hand grasped a doorknob and she hesitated, an endearingly embarrassed grimace crossing her face. “Don’t judge me, okay? I haven’t touched this room since I was sixteen.”

“It can’t be that bad…” Steve began as he followed at her heels, then stopped. The walls were painted cornflower blue, but they were covered on three out of four sides of the room with posters of some brunette pop star Steve had yet to be educated about. “ _Wow._ That’s a lot of posters. And… Canadian?” he asked, noting that half of the posters sported a bold red maple leaf.

Maria put a hand over her face and actually, he thought, blushed. “Like I said, I was sixteen. And, for whatever reason, very into emulating teenaged Canadian pop stars.” She threw herself backwards onto the striped bedspread, seemingly fine with Steve poking around the room. He looked through the bookshelf overflowing with first place trophies and ribbons and studied photos of her successes throughout the years: hoisting a golden dressage trophy as a teenager on one, a child in a stiff tutu and boasting a pair of missing front teeth in another. _There are no pictures of her anywhere else in the house,_ he realized as he replaced a framed science fair award certificate. Hot anger slammed into place under his collar. _All these accomplishments locked up in one room._ Before he could say anything, though, Maria had half sat up. “Come over here,” she said, patting the other side of the bed. “And turn off the light. This is the best part.”

 _Is this the same woman who didn’t want to be in the same car as me this morning?_ But that would be a stupid thing to ask, so he flicked off the light switch and flattened himself on the other side of the bed, taking care to stay far from her side. She wordlessly pointed at the ceiling, where tiny pinpricks of glow-in-the-dark paint were coming to life in the darkness. Constellations and galaxies took shape, spreading to every corner of the room, and Maria said nothing, just breathed with the most peaceful smile he’d ever seen on her face.

Steve couldn’t help but smile, too. He’d thought that he wanted to draw her earlier that morning, when frustration had thrown the planes of her face into sharp relief, but now he saw he had been wrong. He wanted to commit her to the page like this, soft smile on her lips and the cosmos shimmering in her eyes; the private Maria he was privileged to know. His little finger was maybe two inches from hers in the middle of the bed as they lay there, chests rising and falling in near synchronization. He wondered if their hearts were beating in sync, too. He wondered what she’d do if he reached over those two inches and put his hand over hers, or just scooped her entirely into his arms. He wondered how he was going to convince her that he loved her. He-- _what? I what?_ He hadn’t realized this fact about himself before this moment.

 _What about Peggy?_ But as soon as her name zipped across his subconscious he felt the difference. What he felt towards Peggy now was still a form of love, a deep gratitude that he’d been able to see her again here in the future and know that she’d lived an amazing life. It was wholly separate from the way Maria’s elusive smile made his heart thud against his ribcage and the way their conversations could rotate his entire day for the better. He still loved Peggy, he probably somehow always would; but it wasn’t the same as the glorious fire that Maria lit in his veins, and he didn’t know how it had taken so damn long for him to pull the two feelings apart. It wasn’t that the past didn’t matter, it did; but he was alive _now,_ and in the now what he wanted was hold Maria’s hand and never let go.

It was as if his bloodstream had been filled with golden effervescent champagne. He felt so buoyant he thought he might float off the bed. _I’m going to turn to her, and I’m going to tell her to put on one of this crazy Canadian girl’s CDs, and I’m going to ask her to teach me to dance, right here under the stars._ He let his head fall in her direction and she was already looking at him, the moon draping ethereal indigo and lavender shadows across her cheekbones. It seemed wrong to speak louder than a whisper.

“Maria?” She tensed, her eyes darted away, and Steve feared that he had officially missed his window. He had never been one to give up, though, so he tried to start again: “Maria, look, I know--”

“Shh.” Maria put her hand over his mouth. “Someone’s downstairs.” Steve was too distracted by her touch to listen for himself, and she had catapulted from the bed and stuck her ear out to the hallway before he realized what was happening. “Shit,” she said after listening for a sustained moment. “Shit shit _shit._ ” The flat heels of her tall boots clacked away along the hallway and down the stairs, and Steve was left staring at an empty doorframe.

 _That could have gone better._ Steve got up off the bed and straightened the sheets before exiting the room, closing the door behind him with a barely audible click. Maria’s voice was rising from the vaulted ceiling of the foyer, twining discordantly with a man’s cold sneer. The thick rugs that lined the center of the hall disguised the tread of his feet as he crept closer and listened around the corner from the stairwell.

“You said you’d be in Aruba by now.” There was so much artifice in the pleasance of her tone that it set his teeth on edge.

“Oh, so I guess that means you can just waltz right in whenever the hell you want, then?” Steve heard a muffled thump and suspected that the man had kicked their bags. He hoped he’d kicked the one with his shield inside. “I guess you figured it would be _fine,_ then, to leave your _junk_ lying around? Is that what you thought? I didn’t raise you to behave like this--”

“You didn’t _raise_ me at all,” Maria snapped, all reserves of pleasantry gone. “We’ll just leave, okay? We’ll leave. I fucking hate this place, anyway. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to stay in my own goddamn house--”

“Oh, we?” The man, who Steve now recognized was her father, shifted his tone from sneer to jeer. “That’s just _great,_ Maria. I’m so _glad_ you’ve decided to use my home as a goddamn Motel 6 for you and whatever shitty boyfriend you’re slumming around with.”

 _Okay, that’s about enough of that._ Steve had been prepared to stay out of sight for the duration of the argument, because this wasn’t his family or his business. Were his hands about to curl permanent grooves into the wooden bannister? Yes, absolutely, but he was determined not to interfere. Maria could handle nuclear bombs schematics and the Presidential Cabinet: she didn’t need his help, ever. But once he’d been brought into the conversation, he stopped listening, and couldn’t prevent his feet from making their way down the heavy oak stairs.

Senator Ernest Hill was, above all other things, a visibly cold man, narrow and angular with pale skin, black hair frosting to white, and nearly colorless blue eyes. Maria had clearly inherited her lithe height from him, as well as her coloring, but the warmth that he knew lay under her surface had clearly been learned from someone else. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest as Steve descended the stairs towards them, and there was a practiced rigidity to her frame that he could feel from yards away. Her features had flattened into an emotionless blank, and her father’s face only held contempt.

“Dad, this is Steve,” Maria bit out. She looked at him, then at Steve, then at a painting on the wall. “We work together.”

“Steve, huh?” her father scoffed, giving him a supercilious once over before peering over his frameless glasses at his daughter. “Still chasing dumb blond meatheads, I see.” His sigh overflowed with disappointment. “You could at least go after one who doesn’t use steroids. And dating a coworker, too. I thought you were smarter than that, but once again, you've proved me wrong…”

Steve was a head taller than this bastard; he could have grabbed him by the shoulders and thrown him against the wall. Instead he offered him his hand. “Sir.” Senator Hill took his hand with disdain and Steve, in what he could admit was a petty move, crushed it in what only vaguely resembled a handshake. “Steve Rogers. Wish I could say it was a pleasure.”

Maria’s father looked from Steve’s face to hers, slow perception lending his pale eyes an extra shade of blue. “Steve… _Rogers?_ ”

Natasha must have taught Maria how to pull that cat-like smile. “Did I forget to mention that Steve is also known Captain America?” she asked coolly, eyes frigid.

 _“Ca-Captain America?”_ The Senator’s head swiveled slowly between them again. Speculative greed gleamed in his eyes as he no doubt considered trotting out Maria and Steve on his next campaign trail. “You’re _dating_ Captain America?”

“She is,” Steve lied, easing his hard grip on the other man’s hand even as he hung on to it. He didn’t dare look at Maria, lest she contradict him, so he hurried on in his most authoritative voice, “And I’m not going to make any threats, because Maria is, amongst many things, perfectly capable of taking care of herself. I just want to assure you that I will _not_ be supporting your political campaign or whatever else you might think is your due. I will _never_ be seen on the golf course with you or do anything for your sake.” He paused and squeezed the man’s hand again for emphasis. “Maria and I are going to dinner now, because she deserves a nice dinner after having to deal with you. When we get back, I recommend you not be here.”

Steve released Senator Hill’s hand as if it were something particularly disgusting, then reached for Maria’s hand and tugged until she followed him out the door and into their SUV. He didn’t know what was on her mind as she slid into the driver’s seat and thrust the car into gear, but his back teeth were still grinding from the encounter and he didn’t trust himself to speak.

“So… that’s my dad,” Maria sighed ten minutes later as they pulled to a stop in front of a Mexican restaurant that had seen better days.

“Your dad’s pretty terrible,” Steve said, hoping he sounded casual and not vaguely murderous.

“Yeah,” Maria agreed with a few nods. “He really is. But, um. You didn’t have to lie to him, you know. About being together.” She pushed her hair behind her ear and looked at him, and Steve knew it was the wrong time, _this is not the time!_ But when had his mouth and his brain and his heart ever really worked together?

“I’d like to be.” _Really?_ That’s _your big play?_ Maria, indeed, was squinting at him in confusion. _Captain America is so much better at speaking his mind than you could ever hope to be._ He took a breath and tried again. “I mean--what I meant was--look, Maria, I’ve been unbelievably stupid, and I wish I could’ve told you this under the stars instead, but I’ve really missed you, and--and I think I’m in love with you, and I’ve never danced with anyone but when I’m with you I want to--”

Maria’s eyes widened, the blue amplified by the fizzling neon beer sign hanging in the front window of the restaurant. “Steve,” she said slowly, biting her lip in blaring indecision. “Last time--last time you didn’t know what you wanted. Why are you--why now?”

“I--” He didn’t know how to explain how the stars and the moon, of all the cliches, had aligned as they laid on her bed not an hour before. “I guess I just... I figured it out. And I’m sorry that it took me so long, and that I was such a jerk in the meantime.”

“You’re always a jerk,” Maria said automatically, before slanting a glance at him. With great hesitation, she asked, “So what is it that you want, then?”

“I want--that is, I’d really like to hold your hand,” he said quietly. A corner of her mouth tipped up and he felt confidence catch fire in his chest. “I want to hold your hand, and I want to take you to dinner at this terrible restaurant and argue about the bill, and I want you to play me some of that Canadian girl’s music and teach me how to dance, and I want you to swear when I inevitably step on your toes. And I’d really,” (when had they gotten so close?) “ _really,_ like to kiss you, right now.”

Maria studied him for a second, two seconds, three, four. There were three inches between their faces and Steve wasn’t going to close that gap, he wasn’t. He would wait here at the edge for as long as she wanted. After what felt like an eternity, she closed her eyes, huffed a little, and got out of the car.

 _Fuck._ Steve dropped his head to the dashboard and banged it there a few extra times for good measure. _Steve Rogers, Captain of Fucking Everything Up._ They were going to show up at Clint’s farm and everyone’s anticipatory looks were going to fall quickly into pity, and he didn’t even deserve that because this was all his own goddamn fault, and Maria could do a lot better than him _any_ day, and--

The passenger door opened from the outside and Maria was standing there, one hand on her hip. “This isn’t junior high, Rogers,” she said. Her smile was a little shaky, a little nervous. “We’re not making out over the cupholders.”

Steve looked at her dumbly for a second. “You’re--you’re right,” he said, unclipping his seatbelt and unfolding himself from his seat. She didn’t step back when he got out of the car, but stayed in his space, head tilted back so she could meet his eyes. Steve brushed his thumb over her cheek and couldn’t believe she was giving him another chance. He wasn’t going to waste it. “You’re absolutely right.” He wrapped his free hand around her waist, closed the scant centimeters between them, and kissed her the way he’d been thinking about doing for longer than he could recall, deep and slow and probably more enthusiastically than was appropriate for a public place. Maria didn’t seem to mind: her hands slid tentatively up his chest before curling over his shoulders and joining behind his neck, and he felt rather than heard her sigh into him. It was calm and patient, as if they could spend the entire night standing right there in the blue neon glow; and maybe, if not for the wintry December wind, they would have.

“I think the children in the window are staring at us,” Maria murmured eventually, breath warm against his lips.

Steve laughed and hugged her closer for a too-short second before stepping back. “I’ve never corrupted children before,” he said brightly.

“Oh, it’s fun,” Maria said conspiratorially, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. She tucked her hand into his as if it had always belonged there and pulled him towards the door. “C’mon. This is the best place to dance, and they make the strongest margaritas.” She grinned. “Which probably is why it’s such a great place to dance. I don’t suppose you know how to salsa?”

Steve shook his head. “Nope,” he said blissfully, matching her grin as they entered the restaurant. It smelled like stale corn chips and spilled beer, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been happier. “But I can’t wait to learn.”

**\---**

There were more spectacular sunsets in the world: Iceland, Hawaii, the Serengeti. Natasha had seen some of them in person; she’d even seen some with Clint. For whatever reason, though, as they crossed a field of snow together under the descending oranges and purples of the Iowa sun, her heart was telling her that this was the most magnificent sunset she had ever seen.

Natasha didn’t consider herself to be nearly as heartless as some people thought, but she also didn’t subscribe to any _listen to your heart_ nonsense, either. She therefore didn’t know what to do now that her heart always seemed to have something to say. She had been conditioned to never let thoughts like _this sunset is the best sunset because you’re walking with him_ climb like flowering vines from her chest to her head, petals of love bursting forth into her engineered cold. No part of the SHIELD curriculum had included instructions on what to do when _you love him, you love him, you love him_ erupted like dazzling fireworks every time she met his eyes.

“Are the sunsets always this nice in Iowa?” she asked as they crunched along in the snow towards the cluster of trees in the distance. They were in search of a Christmas tree to fill up the wood-paneled great room of the Barton farmhouse, and Clint had insisted that her first Christmas on the farm demanded that they go and cut it down themselves. Natasha had pretended that his use of the word _first_ hadn’t made her eyes mist up the slightest bit, and they’d set off, Clint swinging an old axe with familiar ease.

“Nope,” he replied, popping the word before grinning. “Maybe it’s the snow.” He met her eyes _(you love him you love him you love him)_ and the grin softened: it wasn’t the snow and they both knew it. He reached over and took her hand without saying anything, letting the whispering wind in the nearing trees do all the talking they needed. She had always liked, even before they’d been friends, that they had the same ideas about which moments needed to be talked about and which they could drift through together in silence.

When they reached the copse of trees, though, Clint went into mission mode. He was scandalized when she suggested they grab the first tree they found. “Grab the first tree?” he repeated, incredulity pitching his voice high. “Hell, no. We have to find the perfect tree; y’know, height, width, scent.”

“Scent?”

“Scent,” Clint confirmed with a nod. Her hand was still in his and he pulled her close to the first tree they came upon. “Smell it,” he ordered.

Natasha gave him a look that made it very clear that she was obliging him before giving the tree a delicate sniff. It smelled, unsurprisingly, like a fir tree. “I mean, it smells nice,” she added when Clint looked put out. She sniffed again and, in actually paying attention, noted a chalky smell amongst the sharp scent of the tree. “Is that… Is there a bird’s nest in here?”

A quick investigation of the upper branches revealed a tiny nest woven from twigs and grass, and they decided to leave the tree it in case its occupants returned with the spring rains. They pulled each other from tree to tree, keeping up a bantering argument as the sun meandered past the horizon, until Clint finally made his selection. Natasha still only smelled regular tree smells, but he insisted that it looked _and_ smelled like a perfect Christmas tree, and shortly began chopping with smooth, practiced swings. He was a surprisingly capable (and attractive) lumberjack, and they were soon loading the tree into the back of the farm’s truck and bumping back along the muddy road to the farmhouse.

Natasha didn’t have any experience with Christmas. Having no family to speak of, she had always drawn holiday assignments: assassinating an oil baron in Oman one year, escorting a troupe of SHIELD scientists through Pakistan the next. This time of year, her hands were usually covered with gunshot residue, not tacky pine sap, and she was more likely to be wrestling AIM security guards than uncooperative fir trees. Clint kept sliding anxious looks in her direction, clearly worried that she was getting bored as they sifted together through the boxes of old decorations they’d found shoved in the attic; she finally had to tell him to knock it off. _As if I could be bored when there’s so much to learn: how to fix light strings, when to bake the gingerbread, where to hang mistletoe and how many times I can trick you into standing under it. As if I’d be here if I didn’t want to be. As if peeling back the layers of your past could be anything but fascinating._

Everything about his Christmas traditions interested her: the squashed and misshapen clay ornaments that had clumsy “C”s and “B”s carved into the bottoms, the collection of dusty records he pulled out of an armoire and set onto an old record player. While Nat King Cole spun in the background, they twined lights through the thick boughs of the fir tree according to Clint’s very specific strategy and carefully re-strung and hung all the ornaments they found wrapped in old newspaper. When the last of the glass icicles were dangling from the branches, Clint dug back into the box and came out with a golden five-pointed star that he pressed into Natasha’s hands.

“I thought a member of the family had to do it,” she said hesitantly, running her fingers over the dimpled surface of the hammered metal.

“No reason why you can’t,” Clint said firmly, curling her unsure hands around the gold points. His voice turned shy as he met her eyes. “Besides, you _are_ my family.”

 _You love him,_ she thought as he lifted her onto his stable shoulders and held her steady while she carefully nestled the star on top of the highest point of the tree. Once she was back on the ground, they stood in each other’s arms for a moment, basking in the glow that seemed to emanate from within the tree and fill the entire room. _You love him, and you should tell him._ There were so many opportunities as the rest of the evening progressed: _now,_ as they laughed together carrying boxes back to the attic, _now,_ as they roasted hot dogs in the fireplace because they were too lazy to make a full dinner, _now,_ as he sang along to Elvis and danced her around the kitchen while they waited for the timer on the gingerbread cookies.

But her tongue didn’t cooperate, or she lost her nerve, and so they sat on the couch in front of the fire with a pair of brightly wrapped packages, trying not to look at each other significantly. They had never exchanged real gifts before, not like this, with tape and forethought and ribbon. The only other time they’d ever traded gifts had been during a mission, the last mission they’d gone on together before she’d been tasked to investigate Stark.

“Remember Cozumel?” Clint asked, obviously remembering the same thing. They’d been posing as newlyweds at a beachfront resort frequented by a teenager who could apparently jump through dimensions. SHIELD had wanted to recruit her, and Natasha had accepted the job mainly because it involved lying by the beach for long hours and catching up on the stack of paperback novels she’d been ignoring. Occasionally they had to trail the girl through the open air market that ran along the beach, and on one of these instances when they’d lost her, Clint had pulled her into a stall that had caught his eye. He’d looped the arrow necklace around her neck as a joke, and she’d wrapped a leather band pressed with spiderwebs around his shooting hand, and in the end they’d laughed so much that they’d left the small stand with both items. The girl they lost entirely soon after, and Natasha was certain that Clint had long ago thrown out the cheap leather cuff, but after New York she hadn’t been able to resist pulling out the old gift out and polishing it up to a shine again. _Just as a reminder that your best friend is still alive,_ she’d told herself. _Just to remember who you almost lost._

Now her fingers came to rest on the necklace she hadn’t stopped wearing since he’d left for Zagreb all those months before. “Yeah,” she said with a small smile, “I remember.” He grinned a little and she fidgeted with the small package in her hands for a minute before reaching over and setting it awkwardly in his hands. “Open it,” she said when Clint just looked at the box now in his grasp. “Please?”

Natasha was not used to giving gifts, and she’d ultimately had to break down and ask Steve for help. “I don’t know what to do,” she’d whined, flopping backwards onto his couch with a huff. “I’ve never bought anyone a gift, and Clint is sentimental as hell, and--” She’d pressed a throw pillow into her face and sighed. “Help me.” To his credit, Steve had only laughed a little before talking her through the intricacies of gift selection, wrapping, and presentation. She _thought_ she’d done a good job, but in gift giving there were no discrete measurable objectives that guaranteed success, and so she bit her lip and watched anxiously as Clint’s rough fingers tore through the paper.

“Nat…” When the paper fell away and the latch on the box had been flipped open, Clint was holding a small wooden figure of a bird, carefully handpainted in bold browns, oranges, greens, and purples. His fingernail caught on the thin line around the middle of the figure and he pried it open to find another bird nestled inside, repeating the gesture over and over until he had a collection of five small hawks lined up on the coffee table in descending height. “Natasha, this is--I mean--” She must not have hidden her nervous jitters well enough, because he looked at her and gushed, “These are amazing, Nat, really. I’m--thank you.” He leaned over to deposit her gift in her lap and pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

The package he had handed her was flat and heavy, and she turned it over a few times in her hands. Under the brightly striped paper, she could feel the curved spine and hard edges of a book. _My first gift,_ she thought as her fingers slid under the gap in the paper and lifted the tape. In the Christmas movies she always caught the tail end of on Lifetime, people always ripped the wrapping paper off without a care in the world, but Natasha wanted to savor the experience. Clint waited patiently while she unfolded each bend and flap of paper until she had exposed a thick book covered in dark green leather.

Her fingers ran across the letters stamped in gold across the front cover: _РЕЦЕПТЫ._ “Recipes?” she asked even as she separated the marble-edged pages and looked for herself. Precisely illustrated pages described the processes for making the desserts and breads of her homeland. A wide green ribbon marked the page for _ptichye moloko,_ or “bird’s milk,” a chocolate covered souffle. She somehow doubted that recipe had been randomly chosen.

“Yeah, um, well,” Clint began, tripping over his words when she didn’t manage to voice another question. “I found this book and thought it would be perfect since you like to bake, and, well, I would have learned and made something, but I can’t read Russian, so I thought instead we could make something together, if you wanted…” His nervous babble faded to background noise as Natasha flipped to the inside front cover and found the badly translated note he’d penned in awkward Cyrillic characters:

 _Natasha,_  
_I noticed that you do not have any cookbooks in the secret closet, and I thought it good to start your collection. Maybe you can teach me how to make your favorite kind of cake the next time you have a bad day? I would be fortunate to learn from you. Love, Clint_

Clint had long since trailed off in apprehension, and Natasha knew that she was supposed to be filling the space with something other than her best impression of a gaping fish. _This is when you say thank you,_ she reminded herself as her fingers ran over the grooves left by the ballpoint pen he’d used. _Open your mouth and say: thank you, Clint, this is beautiful and thoughtful and I love it and_ \--

“I love you,” she blurted instead, and it wasn’t until his eyebrows flew towards his hairline that she realized what she had said. “Shit. No. I mean…” He blinked and she could practically see the disappointment beginning to diffuse through him; and she couldn’t bear to let that happen, not when _you love him_ had been tapping at her shoulders for hours now. _You love him, and you’re apparently telling him now, so try again like you actually mean it._ Natasha took a deep breath, reached for his fidgeting hands, and started again.

“I love the book, Clint. It’s beautiful and so thoughtful and just--nobody has ever gotten me a gift like this before and this is just perfect.” She appreciated that he managed to not look completely crushed. “And I--” Romance novels got one thing right, at least: her heart was pounding wildly against her rib cage as she gingerly set the book on the coffee table and then met his eyes. _You love him,_ she thought. “And I love you,” she said, more firmly than she’d expected. “I love you, Clint, and I’m sorry that I screwed it all up just now. I should have said something sooner, but I didn’t know how because… well, I’ve never _done_ this before, you know.” She ducked her head and mumbled, “I thought it should be perfect.”

There was the shining tree, and there was the fire crackling in the fireplace, and then there was Clint’s smile, brighter than the other two combined and so wide that it had to hurt. “Seems pretty perfect to me,” he said, humor warming his voice. “You and me in front of a fire? C’mon, Nat, that’s what perfection is made of.” He leaned forward and kissed her with such aching care that it could have been called reverent, and she felt it, too; this moment felt too divinely perfect to be meant for this earth. Time seemed to slow as her hands came up to lightly frame his face, and if Natasha could have looked away from him, she would have expected to see the fat falling snowflakes hanging frozen in the air.

How could she look out the window, though, when he was kissing her so gently that she could almost feel herself melting? How could her attention be on anything else but the way he pulled back just enough to murmur, “I love you, too, you know,” against her lips? Why would she think about the snow at all when there were shirts to be slowly unbuttoned and sweaters to be carefully peeled off, when their now-bare skin was pressed exquisitely together and when his fingers were nimbly maneuvering the hooks at the back of her bra just as hers moved unerringly towards the button at the top of his jeans, when--

“Natasha, we--” Clint lifted his head from where he’d been kissing a line down her sternum, which was good, as she wasn’t yet willing to reveal that she was ticklish exactly one inch lower. Her hands rested on the warm bare skin of his torso and she could feel as much as hear his steadying intake of breath. “We should take this upstairs,” he said at last, his voice wavering between statement and question. “We should do this right.” He paused and sat back with a serious set to his shoulders. “If you want to, that is. Only if you want to.”

He was giving her space, room to roll away and escape if she wanted, and she loved him for it. They had come to this point multiple times over the past weeks they’d been together, and each time Clint had stepped back, put the control squarely in her hands, and followed her down whatever path she chose without complaint. And _of course_ he did, because that was what decent humans did; but then, this was Natasha’s first experience with decency when it came to these things. Red Room agents were not granted the luxury of choosing their partners; the Black Widow did not select her victims based on attraction. Realizing that Clint wasn’t _letting_ her keep things at a slow pace, but was rather just exercising basic respect, had been both more novel than she liked and more reassuring than she could say.

She had been testing the waters for a month now, swirling her metaphorical toes in a pool that was at once wholly familiar and utterly foreign. _Sex_ she’d been trading on for years, sex she could do, but intimacy terrified her, and she had stomped on the brakes every time a real sense of it came into play. This made her feel silly, because, objectively, her relationship with Clint already bore the unique intimacy that partnership demanded: he knew every single secret that she kept folded up in the bottom drawer of her heart. But there were differences between emotional and physical intimacy, and Natasha was only familiar with the former. The Black Widow killed men: she didn’t cuddle with them.

Natasha knew exactly what would happen if they moved past this liminal period where their pants and brains were still mostly in place: he would carefully wind his fingers in her messily curling hair and, instead of comparing it to a devastating fire, would tell her that she reminded him of a tiger lily, just as bold and elusively precious as the flower that lasted for only one day. He would drop lines of kisses between each of her ribs as if her body was a field he planned to sow with love. He wouldn’t be content to let his hands alone tell her how he felt, but would follow them with his mouth, brushing words of adoration and devotion into every centimeter of her skin. He would wrap her legs around him and move them with the same perfect rhythm he danced with, he would call her Natasha and nothing else even as they came undone in each others’ arms, and later, afterwards, he would tangle his legs with hers under the thick quilt and murmur into her hair that he loved her, as if this was how they fell asleep every night.

And this petrified Natasha; this was what brought her to a screeching halt every time he looked at her with the question in her eyes. She did not know how to be tender, did not know how to express the overwhelming urge to give to him what he so easily gave her: trust, humor, pleasure, joy. As was now always the case when they shared close space, the voices of _want_ and _touch_ and _mine_ rose together in unity from deep within her; but there was now a fourth voice that rang out _yours_ in the clearest of tones, and it mingled with the others in perfect harmony. She was amazed that she even had the propensity to give anything of herself, to even have a _yours_ in the chorus at all; but she feared that the only things she was able to give were destruction and ruin. There was more inside her than that, she knew; there was kindness and humor and someone’s definition of good. None of these things, though, would stop her old training from climbing out of her and snapping his neck without thinking.

“Clint, I’m--” _yours, I’m yours, I’m yours,_ but it was even scarier to admit: “I’m afraid--” Before the word was completely out of her mouth he was trying to put more room between them, and only her quick reflexes prevented him from leaving her space. “I’m afraid that I will _hurt_ you,” she clarified, deliberately forming each sour-tasting word as she held him so his forehead leaned against hers. “I’ve never done this as myself.”

Clint didn’t say anything, so neither did she, and they sat in this frozen mirror image until he hesitantly cupped her cheek and stroked her temple with his thumb. He could have said, _you could never hurt me, Nat,_ even though that was a lie; he could have said, _I trust you_ or _I love you_ or _with me it’ll be different,_ and all of those would have been the truth. But all he did was smile at her with indescribable assurance before saying, “If this is what you want, then trust yourself. In eight years you have never harmed me. You are strong, and I am not fragile.”

Vulnerability coursed through her, less unfamiliar than most would believe. Normally, this would be enough to drown everything out, to make her pull back, straighten her clothes, and turn away so that she couldn’t see the loving patience in his eyes. Tonight wasn’t normal, though: there was a farm and snow in the sky, there was the scent of gingerbread in the air, and there was _yours yours yours_ resounding in every single one of her nerves. Tonight she reached up and ran her fingers through his hair; tonight she said, shy but still sure, “I want you to be mine. And--and I want to be yours.”

He looked at her carefully, almost sharply. “That’s not what this means,” he said, caution lowering his voice. “This is not proof of how we feel.”

“I know,” Natasha replied steadily, eyes never leaving his, “but I also know that we are for each other, and I know that this is what I want.” Clint made the quelling expression that meant he was biting back a _Nat, are you sure about this,_ so she leaned in to show him how very sure she was. He closed his eyes as she kissed the perimeter of his face, his spiky eyelashes resting on his tanned skin. “I want this,” she said as her lips brushed his earlobe, “and this--” now the sensitive spot tucked under his jaw, “and this--” now the dip of his clavicle under his skin. Her lips skimmed the thrumming pulse point in his neck and her hands were pressed against his chest so that she could feel each of his heartbeats matching the words inside her: _want--touch--mine--yours--_

“Natasha,” Clint breathed, hands coming up to curl hers closer to his chest, as if this would somehow permanently tattoo his staccato heartbeat onto the heart lines on her palms. There was nothing but yearning in his eyes when he opened them, and the want she saw in his gaze dropped gasoline directly onto the fire that had been gradually building just below her stomach. He must have seen the flames, or felt the heat that raced across her skin, because in one agile motion he was on his feet with her in his arms. He backed her against the nearest wall, kissed her thoroughly, then murmured, “I think it’s time we went upstairs.”

Natasha grinned. “I think you’re right,” she agreed with a slight nod. “And I _never_ think you’re right.”

“Hey,” Clint said with mild affront, “Rude.” But he smiled and kissed a hundred promises into her mouth, and then he carried her upstairs and fulfilled every single one.

[---]

The first problem was that Clint was snoring in her ear. He slept like the dead when they were in the field, but evidently that silence had just been out of the necessity of stealth. Maybe it was the way he was snuggled up against her back like a jetpack, or maybe it was the careless angle of his arm draped over her waist, or maybe it was just the sleepy content smile his mouth pulled into when she rolled over. Whatever the reason, he sounded like a foghorn until Natasha nudged her head under his chin and his breathing cleared.

The second problem was that, once she had shut Clint up, she thought she could hear… _No. It’s way too early._ But she listened harder and definitely heard knocking, along with Tony’s strident voice and Thor’s deep laughter. _Shit._ Natasha crawled out of bed, ignoring Clint’s grumble as she slipped away, and crept out to the landing that afforded a full view of the front door and its flanking windows. Sure enough, what looked like the entire team was assembled on the front porch, hoisting more bags than seemed necessary. _Shit!_ She hugged the wall on her way back to the room where Clint, completely unperturbed, snored on.

The third problem was that only about half of her clothing had made it upstairs the night before, and what hadn’t was strewn in full view of the front door. “Wake up,” she hissed, shoving Clint’s shoulder as she gave up looking for her underwear and hopped into her jeans. “They’re here.” She was too distracted by her hunt for a sweatshirt to remember that Clint slept without his hearing aids. Finally dressed and hoping that she didn’t look like she’d just rolled out of his arms, Natasha delivered one departing poke to Clint’s sleeping form before sliding down the banister. She waved at the team through the window, pretended to straighten the crocheted throw on the couch so she could kick their clothes under it, then strolled over to welcome everyone in. “No Steve?” she asked as an endless parade of people shuffled into the great room. “No Mari--”

The fourth problem, she supposed, wasn’t actually a problem, depending on how you looked at it; really, it was that all her plausible deniability went out the window. After all, there wasn’t really anything to do but look faintly abashed when Clint stumbled fully naked onto the landing, head tilted as he worked his hearing aids into place, and sleepily called, “Nat, are you coming back to bed-- _oh._ ”

There was a moment of awed silence after Clint swore and backed sheepishly into his room. Every pair of eyes in the room stared up to the recently vacated landing, then swiveled to Natasha’s face. _Three… two… one…_

“Congratulations!” Before Natasha even knew what was happening, Thor had picked her up into a very large and mildly asphyxiating hug. “I _knew_ it!” Thor was probably the only person who could say that without it sounding mocking, or teasing, or reproachful. “We must celebrate!”

“Later,” Natasha promised as he set her back on the ground. She took advantage of the continued stunned silence and ventured a change of subject: “You seem to be missing some people. Big dork with a frisbee? Tall lady with scary good organizational skills?”

“We, um…” Bucky started, pulling at his bun with a guilty smile, “We sort of left them to drive by themselves?”

“With a playlist,” Sam added with an impish grin of his own. “A romantic one: Al Green. Boyz II Men. ABBA.” Bruce’s eyebrows wrinkled at the last addition, which Natasha knew must have been Clint’s suggestion, as he was the only person in her wide acquaintance who considered 70s Swedish Europop romantic. “Steve was pissed as hell, check it.” Sam held out his phone, which displayed a stream of increasingly angry ignored texts, culminating with, _I’m going to outlive ALL of you, and when they put up a monument to us, I will personally ensure that every one of your names are spelled wrong._

“Captain Rogers and Agent Hill are approximately two hours away,” JARVIS intoned from somewhere on Tony’s person. This information elicited a rousing debate about _if_ they’d stopped for the night, _where_ they’d stopped for the night, and whether anything _important_ had transpired. Only Clint’s fully clothed reappearance on the landing swayed the group’s attention, and after a round of well-deserved razzing, he and Natasha led everyone through the house, assigning rooms and delivering linens and ignoring Tony’s demands for pillow mints.

Around lunch time, just as everyone began to crowd around the piles of sandwiches Sam and Clint manufactured with surprising precision, a navy SUV rolled up the drive. “It’s them,” Tony hissed unnecessarily, peeking through the curtains at the front window. Rhodey and Pepper rolled their eyes at each other in practiced synchronicity, Bucky shoved half a sandwich into his mouth before ambling towards the door, and even Jane’s head poked up from behind the thickly bound book she was buried in. Natasha was too self-possessed to press her nose up against the window alongside Tony, but she _was_ curious. Sixteen hours in a car had to have done _something,_ right?

It was as if the entire farm held its breath. Steve climbed out of the driver’s seat and walked around to the trunk while Maria slid out of the passenger door. He came back into view carrying both of their bags, and they approached the door with matching neutral expressions. _Well, at least they’re united about something,_ Natasha thought. When they reached the front porch, Bucky flung the door open with a flair for the dramatic that indicated he’d been spending too much time with Tony. “You made it!” he crowed with a shit-eating grin, as if their delayed arrival was not largely his fault. “We were getting worried.”

Maria smiled _(smiled?)_ apologetically _(what?)_ as she crossed the porch, and Steve’s lips twitched into a remorseful grin. “Sorry we’re late,” he said pleasantly as they stepped over the threshold, shouldering past Bucky. “Must have gotten the departure times mixed up.” He lifted his shoulders in a _silly me!_ shrug before looking at Clint. “Barton, you have a lovely farm. Got somewhere for me to drop these?”

“Uh,” Clint said uselessly, running a hand over the back of his head before waving the new arrivals up the stairs. He widened his eyes at Natasha in a universal _what the fuck?_ sort of look before disappearing down the hall.

“At least they’re not fighting?” Darcy ventured into the second long silence of the day.

“What the _fuck,_ ” Bucky said at the same time, softly but with emphasis. The team erupted into buzzing conversation: Sam and Pepper hotly debated the set of Maria’s shoulders, while Thor questioned whether she’d ever let Steve carry anything for her unless they were somehow involved. Amidst the chatter, Bucky’s groan rose above the noise: “And now we still have to do _trust exercises._ ”

Natasha let her lips tilt into a conspiratorial smile, and she replied noncommittally to each of Tony’s increasingly more ludicrous theories. Steve and Maria hadn’t even looked at each other, or exchanged words, but their bodies… A spy as good as she was fully familiar with the way orbits changed with relationships. Even she and Clint, arguably two of the most physically aware people on the continent, hadn’t been able to resist the magnetic draw of each other; and Steve and Maria, while well trained, weren’t nearly as conscious of the language their bones and postures spoke. Nobody else noticed that Steve was holding Maria’s bag with more care than he held his own, or that the toes of her boots pointed just slightly towards his, or the way their eyes just barely crinkled with happiness at the corners.

But this was exactly the play she would run--hell, before Clint’s damningly naked announcement, it was exactly the play they _had_ been running--and Natasha was content to wait them out. In the meantime, there was plenty else to entertain her: Bucky trying and failing to weasel his way out of trust falls, Pepper and Thor failing abysmally as a charades team, Rhodey getting tangled in the obstacle course and Tony only managing to make it worse, Jane and Bruce somehow sciencing their way to victory in the snowball fight. As the sun began to bury itself below the horizon, Natasha and Thor pulled tray after tray of cookies from the oven while Darcy supervised everyone else in an assortment of kitchen tasks being executed at various levels of success.

“They seem happier,” Thor rumbled quietly as they scraped frosting over gingerbread. He nudged Natasha’s attention to where Steve and Maria stood at the sink, one washing glasses and the other drying. She could see that Maria was muttering darkly out of the corner of her mouth, and that Steve was trying not to give up their façade by laughing. He looked so young--he would always look so young--but for a man who carried the American dream on his shoulders so often, he had never looked more free.

“You do, too,” Thor continued with another nudge and a grin, and Natasha had to wrinkle her nose at him lest she do something mortifying, like blush and giggle like a teenager. “And Barton. It is good that you two have each other.” And they had always had each other, had been each other’s safety net, spare gun, and sole salvation ten times over before they’d ever been friends; but she knew what he meant.

“It is,” she agreed, eyes drifting over to where Clint and Tony were haphazardly chopping vegetables and bickering about old cars. Clint smiled and waved a little when their eyes met, and while she still wasn’t sure she deserved the fervor or affection that filled his face, she still had to bite her lip to contain the joyful grin that threatened to burst forth in response. “It is good.”

They ate dinner in the barn lit by crisscrossing lines of soft white bulbs, and the memory of the blanket fort made Natasha want to hold Clint’s hand right there at the table. _What the hell; it’s Christmas._ She placed her hand on his and squeezed gently, and he looked so happily startled that they beamed at each other like disgustingly sappy idiots for a minute until Steve, while attempting to hear whatever sly comment Maria was whispering to him about it under the constant stream of conversation, leaned too close and put his hand over hers and everyone noticed in one loud chorus.

“Oh, _alright,_ ” he griped, ears and face tomato red, but he didn’t let go of her hand, and she didn’t pull hers away, either.

“I did _trust falls_ for you,” Bucky protested, “you fucking _punk,_ ” and Tony complained that all of this romantic bullshit was going to make him throw up; but Pepper shushed them both and Rhodey reminded Tony that last Christmas had been much worse to endure than this, or had he already forgotten, and Tony’s hand was suspiciously close to Pepper’s by the time the meal drew to a close.

With so many people, it was quick work to clear away the tables and food so that they could use the swept barn floors for dancing. Natasha suspected that Tony had rerouted one of his satellites to the area directly over Iowa so that he could still access JARVIS and all of his technological necessities, but she didn’t mind if it meant that she could watch Bucky teaching Darcy how to do the jitterbug and the jive, looking for all the world as comfortable in his skin as the suave sergeant he’d been once upon a time. She danced with Rhodey, who was without Carol this Christmas while she was on assignment down in Cape Canaveral for NASA, then Clint, then Sam, then Clint again. They were swaying together in no real dance, just appreciating the music and their proximity, when movement caught the corner of her eye.

Off to the side, Steve was offering his hand to Maria and leading her to the very edge of the dance floor. It was an area more shadowed than not, but Natasha could still see that his hands trembled a little as he pulled Maria into the circle of his arms, and that her eyes held fathoms of reassurance as she settled her hand in his. They looked so unsure and yet so hopeful, and Natasha had to look away from the raw emotion on their faces. She looked over at Bucky, the only other person in the room who understood the significance of this occurrence, and he too was averting his gaze. They shared a smile: this wasn’t a moment for their eyes.

Instead, she kissed Clint in the middle of the dance floor, enjoying the way his irises darkened ever so slightly with want, and spun away in search of a drink. He made to follow, but Sam waylaid him with an archery challenge that surely wouldn’t go well, so Natasha proceeded to the makeshift bar, where Tony leaned and sipped from a glass of whiskey.

“They’re gross,” Tony announced as she drew closer and pulled a beer from the cooler next to his feet. Natasha looked up: he was gesturing towards the corner where Steve and Maria still swayed in the dark.

“I think it’s sweet,” she informed him, knocking the cap off her beer with a satisfying crack.

“You would,” Tony snorted, “because you and Barton are gross, too.”

Natasha made sure that he could see her eyes roll. “If anyone’s gross, it’s you,” she pointed out. “You and Pepper have been together since the Expo. That’s, what, four years now? Barton and I only have four weeks.” She poked him in the chest triumphantly. “Grossest.”

Tony frowned. “That can’t be right,” he said slowly, fingers weaving through the air the way he did when he was calculating. “In Malibu, at my birthday party,” _(at least he has the grace to look guilty about that fiasco)_ “you said… something, what was it--”

 _Oh shit, he remembers that?_ “That was a cover, Tony,” she said breezily. “Natalie Rushman and I are not the same person, remember?”

Tony quirked his eyebrow at her, because he wasn’t stupid. “Natalie was a cover, sure, but come on, _fallaces sunt rerum species?_ You can’t tell me that wasn’t you.” He was right, she couldn’t. She’d lost her temper because he was being an asshole and apologizing to Pepper in _completely_ the wrong way, and she’d dropped the most _obvious_ Latin phrase in the book. Clint had teased her about it for months. “You said… you said…” He was still hunting for the words, and he snapped his fingers when he found them. “Ha! I asked you what you’d do if it was your last birthday--”

“ _Real_ subtle, by the way--”

“Shut up, I was _dying,_ and when am I _ever_ subtle--anyway, I asked you that, and you went, ‘I’d do whatever I wanted, with whoever I wanted to do it with.’” He looked at her expectantly. “That meant Barton, didn’t it? So you must have been together longer. Grossest.”

Natasha opened her mouth, then closed it. It had meant more things than Tony would ever know. It had meant the Red Room, Yelena and Yakov and the others she’d left behind. It had meant the new choices and freedom she’d found in SHIELD; her first paycheck, her first purchase, her first apartment. She supposed the “whoever” included Clint, who by that time was indeed her closest friend; but it also would have included Sitwell ( _bastard_ ), Melinda, Coulson.

Really, it had been a statement about herself more than anything else. She had only been two years out of the KGB’s clutches, and the novelty of doing whatever she wanted hadn’t worn off. (She hoped it never wore off.) _Whatever I wanted, with whoever I wanted to do it with_ had been the most selfish thing she could think of, and she had hugged it to herself as something that nobody could take away from her again.

But that was heavy, and it was Christmas Eve, so she only turned her lips down and said, “Not about Barton. Not about anyone. You still lose.”

Tony seemed to feel the shift in her mood, though, and in a burst of perceptive clarity, he asked quietly, “Is that what you’d say now, though? If this was your last birthday, Romanoff, what would you do?”

Natasha looked over the dance floor, which held nearly every person she had ever cared about, and flashed back eight years. Upon her joining the STRIKE unit, Coulson had sat her down and forced her to write a bucket list; he was lame like that. There had been twenty or so items on this list, some painfully normal: _learn to make cookies, see a movie in theaters, spend a day doing nothing._ She had been too realistic, though, too practical, to write down the childish fantasies she still harbored in the tiniest compartment of her heart: _fall in love, have a family._ These would never happen, she had known; these were not meant for people like her.

But somehow she’d done it, anyway, without even trying; somehow she’d found this collection of people that accepted her blood-soaked past, that didn’t mind that she catalogued the weaknesses of every person she met and still woke up sometimes confused by the handcuff absent from her wrist. They were a family, happy and wonderful and sometimes weird as hell, and she was never going to let any of them go.

She watched Clint take aim at whatever Sam wanted him to hit, watched as he breathed in, fired, breathed out; perfect as always. He turned with a smug grin that went a little loopy when he saw she was watching, and tucked his bow under his arm to sign, _I know I’m the hottest guy on the team but you’ve got to stop staring or else Thor will get jealous._ He was wearing, she suddenly noticed, that cheap leather band from Cozumel; it had been tucked under the sleeve of his shirt until he’d rolled it back to shoot. It looked just as stupid as it had that day in the market, and she loved him so goddamn much.

It was such a big feeling, an overwhelming bubble of love for Clint and the team and, at this moment, the entire state of Iowa, that all she could do was shrug. “This is what I’d do,” she said simply. “This is exactly what I want, and this is exactly who I want to do it with.”

“ _God,_ you’re lame,” Tony said thickly after a moment in which Natasha was certain she heard him sniffling. “Don’t _say_ shit like that! Are you _trying_ to make me cry? Fuck.”

“Sorry,” Natasha offered, wholly insincere.

“You’re not,” Tony pointed out, and she shook her head in agreement.

There was a ledger of things she regretted, debts and mistakes she’d never erase, but this--family and friends and love as midnight spread Christmas over Clint’s farm--this she’d never, ever be sorry for.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natasha's toast in Chapter 10 means "to our friendship!"
> 
> Maria's father blaming her for her mother's death is canon, and in some universes she is definitely depicted with some unspecified Hispanic heritage, but all other parts of her background are entirely made up by me.
> 
> Thanks again for reading!! I'm sure to have another project going soon, and in the meantime, feel free to come by my tumblr anytime and say hi :)


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